Dead Ringers – 1988 – David Cronenberg

Jeremy Irons plays identical and inseparable twin brothers, Eli and Bev Mantle – gifted gynaecologists on a shared path of self destruction – in this tense drama. Cronenberg masterfully constructs an elaborate series of ‘real illusions’, with identity as the central tenet; in the end neither the actors supporting the neurotic twins nor the viewer is ever convinced they can tell the brothers apart. JJ