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A masterly refinement of the fraternal condition in Scanners, and there's Stephen Lack as the avant-garde artist specializing in "mathematics in metal." Identical twins, "the sweet one and the shit," Jeremy Irons embodies both in one of cinema's greatest performances. As children they're fascinated by sexless underwater fertilization, as adults they poke the feminine enigma as gynecologists at a Toronto clinic. Their newest client is a movie star with a three-pronged uterus and a masochistic streak, given Moreau-levels of carnal captivation by Geneviève Bujold. Love for one and sex for the other, she senses something amiss following a kiss but doesn't discover the switcheroo until later, the vortex of addiction takes hold. ("It's all right—I'll separate you," she murmurs in a dream before chomping on the brothers' connective viscera.) Nabokov's "Scenes from the Life of a Double Monster," finished at last by David Cronenberg as a poem of desire and dependency. Shared experience, split ego, the misogynistic psyche turned to surgical steel. "Mutant women? That's a great theme for a show." Pas de trois, rejected. The confident one knows how to hustle and conquer, the introverted one is like his paramour "slashed open" by vulnerability, the synchronization is broken. Sterile blue architecture increasingly strewn with rubbish, sacramental crimson sheets with openings for the alarmed eyes of nurses. "I have often thought there should be beauty contests for the insides of bodies." Special-effect wounds in the back lot and the trembling hand on the shaving razor and the regression of birthday cake and orange soda, Cronenberg at his most gravelly concentrated takes it all in with devastating calm. Back to the womb for the finale's grateful tragedy, a Pietà and a suggestion of Rimbaud ("Par délicatesse / J'ai perdu ma vie"). Cinematography by Peter Suschitzky. With Heidi von Palleske, Barbara Gordon, and Shirley Douglas.
--- Fernando F. Croce |