SARAH VINE'S My TV Week: I loved Rachel's troubled doubles trends now
DEAD RINGERS
Amazon Prime video
This is very explicit: no holds barred, if you know what I mean. But it’s also slick, clever and darkly addictive, thanks largely to the mesmerising screen presence of Rachel Weisz in the role of twin gynaecologists Elliot and Beverly Mantle.
Based on the 1988 David Cronenberg film of the same name (and not, as UK viewers might assume, a remake of the hit BBC impressions show), it’s essentially a modern-day Jekyll and Hyde tale.
Sister Elliot – the older of the two – is a hard-drinking, cocaine-sniffing borderline psychopath sex addict; Beverly is a shy, rather emotional lesbian with a strong social conscience.
Weisz plays the latter with her hair up, minimal make-up; her opposing twin is all tumbling raven locks and crimson lips. It’s not an especially sophisticated conceit, but it works well as far as the viewer is concerned.
Weisz inhabits each one with admirable intensity, utterly believable as both. This is really her show – although there is a great cast of strange peripheral characters, including Poppy Liu as the sisters’ somewhat sinister housekeeper and Jennifer Ehle as a philanthropist with all the moral fibre of a used tissue.
Rachel Weisz stars as the Mantle twins in the showb Based on the 1988 David Cronenberg film of the same name
It’s her decision to fund the twins’ new centre for women’s health that triggers their descent into darkness.
Elliot – insatiable, amoral, brilliant – embodies the seductive power of technology, our desire to bend nature to our will regardless of consequences; Beverly is her conscience. She knows what they’re doing is wrong. She loves her sister, but she also hates her, and the hold she has over her.
The sisters have a game: when the shyer twin, Beverly, fancies someone, Elliot will seduce them – and then swap identities. It works fine until Beverly falls in love with one of their conquests, a successful young actress called Genevieve (Britne Oldford).
At first Elliot is incredulous, then jealous. Madly so. This feeling is new, strange, frightening – like the illegal babies she grows in her test tubes. She’s losing her power over her little sister, and she doesn’t like it one little bit.
UK writer Sarah Vine praised Rachel Weisz's double performance as twin sisters Elliot and Beverly Mantle
As Beverly and Genevieve’s relationship begins to blossom, Elliot unravels. No amount of short-term gratification can fill the void. Her behaviour is despicable, yet somehow you feel sorry for her, lost in her misery.
There’s a heartbreaking scene towards the end that illustrates the depth of her descent, as out of self-loathing she seduces a man who, in her earlier pomp, repulsed her. It’s almost Hogarthian.
Indeed, there are some wonderful visual touches: a
