What
if you were the evil twin? You would probably want to take over your
doppelganger’s nicer life. If that were the case, you might be interested in
the Brand New-U corporation’s services. They specialize in finding your “identical”
and moving you into their “life-space.” Sometimes it gets a little messy, as
when a dead identical is left in place of Slater’s girlfriend Nadia. Hoping to
find her again, he will accept their offer of free life-matching in Simon
Pummell’s Identicals (a.k.a. Brand New-U, trailer here), which opens this
Friday in select theaters.
When
Slater met Nadia to celebrate his birthday, she had the place decked out quite
romantically, but there was still something foreboding that the tragically
unintuitive stiff could not pick up on. The commando-style BN-U team expected
to find her alone, but Slater’s presence led to awkward complications, like the
Nadia’s dead-ringer lying dead at his feet.
Engaging
in swift damage control, a BN-U manager offers Slater the opportunity to move
up to an identical’s better life. Figuring it will give him a chance to search
for Nadia—and avoid prosecution for her murder—he accepts the somewhat Faustian
bargain.
Of
course, he quickly violates both the letter and the spirit of the pact.
Life-matchers are not supposed to take anything with them from their previous
life-space. They are to look forwards, not backwards. However, Slater has other
ideas. Unlike Nadia, whom he finds in rather short order, he maintains full
awareness of his previous life. She seems to have no memory of him, but the
spark is still there. Unfortunately, you do not break the rules of Brand New-U
without attracting attention.
Identicals is a wildly
stylish film that periodically unleashes its unabashedly surrealist impulses.
As pure head-trip cinema, it is unusually extravagant and potent. However, its
internal logic is slippery at best. Apparently, actors no longer ask “what is
my motivation in this scene” or Pummell is not inclined to care, because
characters are constantly following inexplicably perverse courses of action. It
all starts with Brand New-U. Being an evil corporation is all well and good,
but they have to be able to monetize their villainy. Rather bizarrely, they
seem to target the rich at the behest of disadvantaged identicals. Its like
Occupy Life Space over there.
Regardless,
Reiner van Brummelen’s coolly elegant cinematography makes the dystopian future
look beautiful and sinister in equal measure. Roger Goula Sarda’s electronic
ambient soundtrack recalls the glory days of Tangerine Dream. As a crafter of
imagery, Pummell can hang with Terry Gilliam, while maintaining a vibe of
overwhelming paranoia. Apparently, he is just too big picture to bother
connecting the micro-dots, but those mechanical hiccups take viewers out of his
carefully constructed world to ask: “wait a minute, why are they doing this?”
Nora-Jane
Noone gives a wonderfully rich and multi-faceted performance as the various
personas of Nadia. She makes it clear she is sort of playing the same
character, but maybe not, without beating us over the head. As Slater, Lachlan
Nieboer (best known as the blind convalescing soldier in season two of Downton Abbey) is convincingly out of
his depth and reasonably intense as he gets caught up in the bedlam.
