Dead ringers (1988)

Dead ringers is very much a David Cronenberg film. Two twins pursue the same woman, who cannot separate the one from the other. Gradually, the twins' identities start to blur. Of course, I mean: of course, the twins are gynecologists. As this is a Cronenberg film, the gruesome perversity of corporeality must be explored. But Dead ringers is a much less raunchy affair than earlier films such as Videodrome or The Fly. Cronenberg's style here, and in many other films, is based on a drab scenery, quite dry dialogue, and then - the sudden rupture of strangeness. Often, this works. At time, Dead ringers is, however, too monotonous for its own best and I mean monotonous not as in slow but as in the film becoming empty, so that this viewer starts to scream inside: yes, yes, I've seen this scene a thousand times, we know that these guys' inner lives are falling apart! What I like about the film relates only secondarily to the story. I adore Cronenberg's fondness for what first appears like icy, clinical elegance (look at Jeremy Irons' fabulously bloodless appearance as both of the twins in the beginning of the film!) - and then this whole world is torn to pieces, it gradually transmutes into something completely different, very un-clinical. Dead ringers is a quiet and subdued film with a grisly content. Put it on at 3:00 am on a Tuesday night and you will have a blast!