Identicals

Documentarian Simon Pummell's debut fiction film wants to say something profound about personal identity, but despite a stylish surface, this cerebral sci-fi movie is both confused and confusing. The central character is Slater (Lachlan Nieboer), whose romantic night with his beautiful girlfriend Nadia (Nora-Jane Noone) is interrupted by a gang of masked thugs. They abduct Nadia, but one of the kidnappers is killed in the process, and the corpse proves to be literally a dead ringer for Nadia. Slater is determined to track down his girlfriend, embarking on a search that leads him to a secret organization called Brand New U, which offers people the opportunity to switch places with happier doppelgangers—purportedly explaining the weird home invasion by Nadia's duplicate. Believing that becoming a client himself will give him the best chance of infiltrating the firm and finding Nadia, Slater undergoes elaborate treatment and receives a new identity, but then refuses to give up his former life, earning the wrath of the company, after which Slater is eventually confronted by not only his own double but also another Nadia. Identicals does manage to instill a general feeling of unease, but that is partially due to the fact that even an attentive viewer will have a hard time figuring out precisely what is happening and why. Ambitious but fatally flawed, this is not a necessary purchase. (F. Swietek)