Dead Ringers

Saw Dead Ringers, a Cronenberg film about two identical twin brothers who share everything, including their identities. Beverly is the shy intellectual one, Elliot the brave charismatic one. This difference is only known to themselves and us audience members however, and they swap places with each other so often that it's very hard in any scene where they don't name each other for even we, who have been let behind the scenes, to tell them apart. The nature of their relationship is explored in a manner that is alternately leering and compassionate. There's a scene midway through the film where they are both dancing on either side of a woman, Beverly in front and Elliot in back. The woman seems to be more interested in Elliot, and he moves his hands over her hands, guiding over Beverly's body. Is Elliot providing for his brother by redirecting the woman's advances, or is stealing her away from him. Or is he perhaps making some kind of love to Beverly, by means of this woman? An ambiguous scene which I believe perfectly encapsulates the film as a whole. Ambiguous, oddly sexual, fairly grotesque.

The brothers are gynaecologists due, thematically, to most of their issues arising from women. Indeed, when Beverly falls in love with an actress with three cervixes is when shit starts to hit the fan. Elliot struggles to recapture Beverly from the actress and to "resynchronize." they bring up the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, who both died in the same night. Chang in his sleep and Eng, according to the movie, from fright at his dead brother. I think it would have been more thematically appropriate to nix this flummery about being frightened to death for the truth: that Eng's heart pumped his oxygenated blood into Cheng's corpse where it stayed until he bled to death into his brother. Something more along these lines is what happens in the film (although ultimately crisis is averted (in a way.))

The body-horror Cronenberg is known for is slow coming but eventually gets there. His interest in obsessions and madness is a more through-going theme. The brothers and their creepy but tender relationship (and it's eventual dissolution) is the central focus of the film. Their emotional co-dependance is linked with the physical co-dependence of Chang and Eng. A kind of a freakshow of a film, high on sensation and light on insight but it's Cronenberg, so it's a hell of a freakshow, at least.