In the lead up to the 7th Canadian Film Festival in Australia (August 2012), join us as we countdown the Top 100 Canadian Films of the past 30 years. We'll be posting one film a day leading up to Canada Day on July 1st 2012. Do you agree with our team favourites? Let us know your thoughts!
#35 – Dead Ringers
From the outset, identical twins and gynecology would seem like the ingredients for a dirty joke rather than a great love story, but that’s just how David Cronenberg rolls.
The term ‘body horror’ is frequently attached to his filmography, but while Dead Ringers' story of Beverley and Elliot Mantle (both played by Jeremy Irons in a phenomenal dual performance), is based on real events and offers ample space for grotesquerie, ‘body tragedy’ is a more apt label here.
After trading places with one another for a patient-turned-lover (Genevieve Bujold) – in effect, loving as one – the film charts the twins’ self-destructive attempt to live as one; in Cronenberg’s hands, the process is queasy, absurdly funny and profoundly sad.
“That’d be fine for a cadaver, but it won’t work with a living patient”, says a university supervisor to the Mantle twins on their custom-made medical equipment. The less charitable might say the same about Cronenberg’s approach to human drama.
But the precision of his filmmaking – particularly his unusually crisp lighting of faces – is enthralling, heightening the mysterious motivations for the Mantles’ dangerous experiment in metabolic synchronisation.
As in many of the director’s films, the body is a prison whose sacredness must be disavowed for the soul to triumph; paradoxically, it’s also this notion that gives Dead Ringers its full tragic force.
- Ian Barr
“Watching Dead Ringers is not unlike watching a critical operation -- unnerving but also enthralling.” Desson Thomson - Washington Post
To see the other films in the countdown so far, click here.