Dead Ringers (1988)

☆ ☆ ☆

Dead Ringers (1988) – D. Cronenberg

It’s Jeremy Irons vs. Jeremy Irons and the winner is….Jeremy Irons!  The actor is mesmerizing playing identical twin gynaecologists who get involved with Genevieve Bujold, a nutty actress, and sink into drug addiction and despair.  With David Cronenberg at the helm, Irons is encouraged to go over the top and he does, but the gruesomeness is actually kept to a relative minimum (relative to other Cronenberg vehicles of the time -- this came chronologically between The Fly and Naked Lunch).  Yet, for much of the first half of the film, slow and stately as it may be, I felt on the edge of my seat, awaiting a shock moment of gore – or at least a weird prosthesis – that never quite arrived (OK, actually there was one in a brief dream sequence!).  As madness descends on the sensitive of the two twins (the other is more virile), things do get messier…and also somehow more boring and drawn out.  In the end, though strange, this film falls into the lesser half of Cronenberg’s output, saved only by the virtuosic performance(s) of Irons.