Dead Ringers

David Cronenberg, 1988 (6.8*)
This is an acting tour-de-force by Jeremy Irons, who plays twin gynecologists, one of whom has a decidely warped sense of reality. The brothers don’t let people know they are twins, which allows them to switch off with a new lover, played by Genevieve Bujold. It also lets them play around in a world of their own fantasy creation for the most part. Somewhere down road to bliss one brother takes a definitely wrong turn, and ends up somewhere between Salvador Dali and Marquis de Sade. Irons makes both brothers just slightly different, and turns in not only a career best performance but one of the best of all-time.

Puzzlingly, Irons wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar®; a group of actresses led a write-in campaign in protest but the Academy refused to accept the ballots. When he won the Oscar® for his next, and definitely inferior performance in Reversal of Fortune, he said “I have David Cronenberg to thank for this, and some of you out there know what I mean.” Like most Cronenberg films, this one is very disturbing and has some gore, which detracts from an otherwise interesting psychological study, but still worth seeing for the Irons performance alone.