Rachel Weisz Pulls Double Duty in the Psychosexual Fog of Dead Ringers: Review
The post Rachel Weisz Pulls Double Duty in the Psychosexual Fog of Dead Ringers: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: While it veered somewhat from the explicit sci-fi body horror of many of his other works, the original Dead Ringers is still quintessentially Cronenberg: Perverse, gross, endlessly fascinated with the human body and how its construction defines and divides us from the worlds we live in. Now, in classic streaming-era fashion, Amazon Studios has turned this film, like many others, into a binge-able six-hour limited series, with a few novel twists.
The first and foremost of these is the casting: Rather than rehash the 1988 original’s tale of two male twins (both played with reptilian duality by Jeremy Irons) who use their gynecology practice to satisfy their sexual urges, creator Alice Birch (Lady Macbeth, The Wonder) gender-swaps the Drs. Mantle into Elliot (Rachel Weisz) and Beverly (guess who), a pair of acerbic fertility specialists running a high-end clinic in New York City.
Elliot’s the fun-loving, provocative one, always ready to poke, prod, and pervert; she attacks every interaction with a new person as an opportunity to break taboos, from bluffing about threeways with her twin and a leering diner patron to egging on an expectant dad to flash her his goods in her office. Beverly, meanwhile, is meeker, more concerned with the ethics and pragmatism that goes into their practice, and tormented by the fact that she keeps trying — and failing — to conceive a child herself. They’re one soul, split among two bodies, incomplete by themselves but a whole person together.
But a series of developments threaten that equilibrium, from a wealthy and ruthless billionaire (Jennifer Ehle) whose patronage they need to fulfill their ambitions to open a new line of fertility clinics, to an actress (Britne Oldford) with whom Beverly falls in love. Crack by crack, the bond that keeps the Mantles together begins to rip apart, and you never know who will end up as collateral damage.
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child: Alice Birch’s works are marked by a kind of righteous fury about female sexuality and power: These gender-flipped versions of the Mantles would be right at home alongside Florence Pugh’s Katherine in Lady Macbeth, or, well, her Lib Wright in The Wonder. But where Birch’s eye turned to the subjugation of the past in her other works, for Dead Ringers she’s laser-focused on the intersection between girlboss feminism, the vagaries of the Silicon Valley tech set, and the actual health needs of pregnant people.
The show’s look, initiated by director/EP Sean Durkin (The Nest), is of sterile, white offices, ostentatiously-manicured manors, and high-end clinics that “look like spaceships.” The soundtrack is all ’80s New Wave needledrops (The show’s title sequence serves up a dollhouse version of their offices alongside Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams”), and the Casio hits from Murray Gold’s incidental score follows that through; it’s all a bit American Psycho, which is an intriguing, if scattershot direction to take.
Dead Ringers (Prime Video)
That aimlessness continues for much of the show’s run, occasionally touching on intriguing ideas or an impeccably performed scene in between long stretches of repetition. Entire episodes are dedicated to droll discussions of fertility science and the politics therein around dinner tables with different groups of wealthy patrons, the age-old clash of altruism versus commerce. The show’s narrative grows increasingly fragmented as it progresses, lapsing into nightmarish asides and flash-forwards whose ultimate twist you can guess even before its climax. One sequence stops the show cold for a waking nightmare forcing Elliot to confront modern gynecology’s origins in racist experiments on Black women, which is a well-met point but feels vestigial in the context of this specific show.
The scenes, in microcosm, are delightful explorations of the show’s pet themes (especially when you’ve got actors like Ehle and Emily Meade to spice them up). Still, it’s hard not to feel the strain of a show grasping desperately to fill a limited-series runtime with unfocused asides. That can be most felt with the Mantles’ mercurial assistant, Greta (Poppy Liu), who floats in the show’s periphery collecting items for some mysterious purpose, one that feels tacked-on once you find out what it actually is.
…And Twins! For as fragmented as Dead Ringers‘ labyrinthine plot and helter-skelter pacing can be, though, Rachel Weisz is the glue that holds much of it together. Whether as the brazenly provocative Elliot, or the comparatively shy Beverly, she’s clearly having a blast, wry smiles often hiding a multitude of calculations and resentments.
Elliot’s clearly the more delightful role to play, a fly in the ointment who only buzzes louder the further Beverly’s relationship with Genevieve takes her from her sister. (The show peaks early in Episode 3, when Elliot finds herself in a rapidly escalating series of outbursts with a nihilistic homeless woman; the rooftop salon that follows, featuring Weisz and guest actor Susan Blommaert exchanging lines of coke and soul-crushing reads, is worth watching all on its own.)
But end of the day, Dead Ringers is a psychosexual love story about two twins who are, whether they’ll say it or not, in love with each other, and Weisz uses both roles to show the range of her vast talents. She’s both angel and devil, beast and brethren, and it’s beautiful to watch them work.
The Verdict: As these kinds of lengthy streaming series adaptations go, there’s a lot going on under the thematic hood that sets Dead Ringers above much of the pack. Rachel Weisz turns in wounded, audacious work, and Birch’s coarse yet lyrical dialogue makes for some deviously nasty exchanges. But it’s hard not to feel that, even with its deeper dives into the internal pressures of womanhood and fertility, Birch bites off more than she can chew over the course of six entire hours. That said, it’s ultimately worth a watch for Weisz’s incredible work, some devilishly fun guest turns, and an ending that zigs where Cronenberg zags without feeling like an arbitrary change.
Where’s It Playing? Dead Ringers gives birth in the fertile ground of Prime Video on April 21st.
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Rachel Weisz Pulls Double Duty in the Psychosexual Fog of Dead Ringers: Review
Clint Worthington
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