Dead Ringers (1988)

"She's heard that it makes sex come on like Nagasaki..."

This is the fourth David Cronenberg film I've seen (and blogged) and I've yet to see any with his famous body horror. Even here, beyond a weird dream sequence and the bloody ending, body horror is quite moderate and I've yet to see anything that would be described on Rick and Morty as "a Cronenberg".

That aside, the film is superbly shot, choreographed, scored, and contains a sublime and extraordinary performance by Jeremy Irons as the twins which is so outstanding that you forget he isn't even bothering to sound Canadian. On the surface it's all brilliant. And yet...

It's a weird film; Elliott and Beverly are twin gynaecologists and Elliott, being the more confident, seduces women and lets his brother have the sloppy seconds while letting them think it's the same person, which is a bit rapey, and they both live happily under this arrangement until Bev goes and falls in love with a movie star called Claire who, as a very Cronenberg detail, has a weird mutant vagina. This leads to a slow unravelling of first one twin and then the other, neither being quite an individual.

So, yeah, weird. But it doesn't really play with any of the ideas it brings up, and for me the bloody climax doesn'y quite feel either earned or weird enough. A well-made but oddly empty film.