I love David Cornenberg's film "Dead Ringers," which was my earliest introduction to his particular brand of mind-bending body horror. It seemed like an odd choice for a remake, since so much of its effectiveness is due to Jeremy Irons' amazing double performance as the Mantle twins. However, the new miniseries version, created by Alice Birch, features an equally formidable lead performer: Rachel Weisz. She plays the brilliant twin OBGYNs, Elliot and Beverly Mantle, who are on the cutting edge of research in fertility and reproduction, but also deeply codependent and prone to mental instability.
In order to expand the story to fill a six episode miniseries, there are several new subplots and characters. A big part of the season is spent with the twins trying to win over a rich investor, Rebecca Parker (Jennifer Ehle), who they hope will fund a new birthing center and laboratory. We also meet their odd live-in maid Greta (Poppy Liu), their parents (Kevin McNally and Suzanne Bertish), a magazine writer working on a piece about them (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine), and several of their patients. As in the film, Beverly falls in love with one of these patients, an actress named Genevieve (Britne Oldford), and Elliot can't resist getting involved to play matchmaker in the most twisted way possible.
Here, I will insert warnings for graphic nudity and gore, including very explicit birthing scenes, a miscarriage, and surgical procedures. It's not Cronenberg, but it's similarly intense body horror, exploring the female anatomy and pregnancy in often uncomfortable detail. Because the Mantles themselves are women in this version, and Beverly is dealing with infertility, these scenes feel less alien and exploitative, and more connected to the psychological states of the twins. This also reduces the amount of tension and horror in the miniseries, making it feel like less of a genre piece and more of a character study. The new "Dead Ringers" is still pretty twisted, but more due to the nature of the Mantles' relationship and less due to the uncanniness of their biology.
Rachel Weiss plays the twins with wholehearted weirdness, and such deftness that I instantly forgot it was the same actress playing both characters the moment I saw them. The more confident and extroverted twin, Elliott, is especially memorable - an impulsive hedonist and rule-breaker, who habitually greets Beverly as "Baby Sister." She instigates a lot of the show's drama, such as in a meeting with Parker where she antagonizes another woman by refusing to stop swearing. However, she's so utterly devoted to Beverly that it's difficult to tell which sister is really in control, and who really wants what. There's so much going on under the surface that it can be deeply unnerving just to watch them have simple conversations. The power dynamics shift drastically back and forth over the course of the miniseries, as the twins' relationship is tested and threatened.
Among the supporting players, Jennifer Ehle is the clear standout as Parker - who coldly and bluntly interrogates the Mantles at every opportunity, and invites them into her unsettling world of privilege. I wish I could have seen more of her, as she feels a little underused as a Mephsitophelean figure. Nearly all of the major characters in this series are women, which puts the familiar expressions of sexuality and power in a very different context. Rachel Weiss so dominates the proceedings, however, that it often feels like there isn't room for anyone else. Genevieve, surely named after actress Genevieve Bujold, who played the equivalent love interest in the "Dead Ringers" movie, is much less of a presence than her namesake, and we get almost nothing of her POV. I liked the reveal of Greta's backstory and ultimate purpose in the story, but it would have been more effective if we'd spent more time with her and built up to it more gradually.
Sean Durkin directed three of the six episodes, keeping a few famous images from the Cronenberg film, but with very different aesthetics. Everything here is more grounded, to the point where even the occasional brushes with science fiction feel very plausible. I missed some of the visual flair, but it wouldn't have suited the new story, which is likewise about very strange but ultimately very human characters. The show flirts with more extreme material, but in the end I like that the creators treat the Mantles fairly sympathetically, as women who may be monsters, but are fundamentally still women.
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