From David Cronenberg, director of “The Fly”, comes this 1988 controversial and stylish psychological horror / drama, based on a bizarre true story.
JEREMY IRONS delivers a disturbing performance as twin gynaecologists Elliot & Beverly Mantle. Intrigued by the mysteries of sex and anatomy, the brothers grow from inseparable playmates to world-renowned specialists. Sharing everything from their hi-tech clinic to their women, Elliot and Beverly seem inseparable.
The entrance of Claire (Genevieve Bujold) an actress seeking fertility treatment, changes their relationship forever. Both twins seduce her but shy, sensitive Beverly falls in love and attempts to break free from his charming brother with catastrophic consequences.
Awards
- Genie Awards 1989 – Won Best Motion Picture, Won Best Achievement in Art Direction/Production Design, Won Best Achievement in Cinematography, Won Best Achievement in Direction, Won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Jeremy Irons, Won Best Screenplay
- Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films USA 1990 – Nominated Saturn Award for Best Horror Film, Nominated for Best Actor Jeremy Irons
- Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival 1989 – Won Grand Prize, Won C.S.T. Award
- Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 1989 – Won Best Actor Jeremy Irons
- Fantasporto 1989 – Won Best Actor Jeremy Irons, Nominated for Best Film
- Golden Horse Film Festival 1989 – Won Best Foreign Director
- Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards 1988 – Won Best Director, Won Best Supporting Actress Geneviève Bujold, Won 2nd place for Best Picture
- National Society of Film Critics Awards USA 1989 – 2nd place Best Screenplay
- New York Film Critics Circle Awards 1988 – Won Best Actor Jeremy Irons
Dead Ringers Review
By Village Voice
"David Cronenberg's body panic masterpiece…The keynote address in what has become—rising out of the neurotic bath of 1970s exploitation films—one of world cinema's most original and discomfiting visions, this 1988 masterwork by David Cronenberg has aged into a kind of subterranean sacredness. Name another film that takes as many risks, runs its astonishing course with such a steady hand, and has as much to say about brotherhood and corporeal transience.
Derived from a true story about a pair of gynecologist twins who committed suicide together, but marinated in Cronenberg's unique physio-anxiety, the film tracks Jeremy Irons as two dislocated doctors with an avant-garde practice whose warped symbiosis becomes infiltrated by a third party (Geneviève Bujold, as a sensible-minded hophead who has the audacity to like one of the identicals and not the other), and who begin spiraling into a crazed dream world of mutation-phobic dementia, pharmaceutical zombiehood, and body panic.
To watch Irons not merely inhabit two characters in the same frame but also manifest the dizzyingly complex dynamic between them—their history, dependencies, fears—is to see the thespian equivalent to splitting the atom. Proportions of wit, fear, weakness, hostility, and kindness vary from brother to brother, never quite adding up to 100 percent, while during the film's shattering, mordant birthday celebration the differences between the twins become lost in a sleepwalking barbiturate swoon.