Dead Ringers

Year of Release:  1988

Director:  David Cronenberg

Screenplay:  David Cronenberg and Norman Snider, based on the book Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland

Starring:  Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold

Running Time:  115 minutes

Genre:  Drama, thriller, horror

Identical twins Beverly and Elliot Mantle (Irons in a dual role) are both gynaecologists and run a clinic in Toronto.  The Mantles live together and frequently pose as each other.  The more ruthless and callous of the two, Elliot, often seduces his patients and, when he grows bored, allows the more gentle and passive Beverly to adopt his identity to sleep with the women, without them having any knowledge of the exchange.  This works for them until Beverly falls in love with glamorous actress Claire Niveau (Bujold). The relationship begins to drive a wedge between the bothers who soon learn that "separation can be a terrifying experience."

This film marked a change in the career of Canadian director David Cronenberg who made his name with such gruesome fare as Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), The Brood (1979), Scanners (1981) and Videodrome (1983), before moving to more mainstream work such as the Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone (1983) and the remake of The Fly (1986).  With Dead Ringers Cronenberg moved into more complex, psychological material, which didn't necessarily fit into any particular genre.  The most traditionally "Cronenbergian" sequence in the film is a very brief scene in which Beverly has a nightmare of himself and Elliot being attached to each other by a thick, fleshy cord, which Claire proceeds to bite in order to separate them.  While this lacks the trademark blood and guts that Cronenberg was known for, it is possibly his most disturbing work.  Jeremy Irons delivers a career best performance with his dual turn as the twin brothers, delineating the subtle differences in their personalities, making each distinct while showing that they are two separate halves of one whole.  The impressive special effects makes the scenes of the two twins together look seamless.  Geneviève Bujold is a little underused, particularly in the film's second half, but she is good as the woman that comes between the twins.  The film takes place mostly indoors, in the spotlessly clean environment of the Mantle's clinic and apartment, which seem almost one and the same, all gleaming metal and soft lighting, and the opulent hotel rooms and expensive restaurants that Claire inhabits.  As the Mantle's mental condition deteriorates, so too does their  living space, buried under increasing amounts of trash and debris.  The film was adapted from a book called Twins by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland  which was inspired by a true story in which identical twin gynaecologists, Stewart and Cyril Marcus, were found dead together in their New York apartment in 1975.  I can't say anything about the book as I've never read it, but the working title for the film was Twins, after the book, but it was changed to avoid confusion with the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito comedy which came out around the same time.  This is a film which won't be to everyone's tastes, it's slow, and has a strangely alienating quality to it.  Even in the emotional scenes, the way the shots are framed and the scenes performed seem designed to push the audience away rather than draw us in, the sombre classical score by Howard Shore reinforces that feeling.  The film however has a distinctive and impressive chilly atmosphere and will linger in the mind for a very long time after it is over.     

Double trouble:  Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold and Jeremy Irons in Dead Ringers