I completely understand the frustration and the sense of feeling lost most people have experienced with this film. It is not going to be everybody's cup of tea and I would almost dare say this is a film made for a film student to analyze.
Identicals, not very aptly titled, is like a slow hand that keeps testing your borders as a viewer with its sensual cinematography and a very intense focused story-line that plays away from the usual action based plot lines, but rather becomes a cat and mouse of reactions. It sits very difficult from a psychological point of view since it uses very subtle nuances in film making to keep the viewer feeling uncomfortable and I think this discomfort has probably been experienced by many to be "boredom".
We are uncertain throughout who is the cat and who is the mouse while the story unfolds and the two main players keep pushing back and forth testing boundaries and trying to find each other's " you" factor.
It is The Nines (2007) meets Melancholia (2011) meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
Far from perfect, I felt that this was a story that could have either be told as a short film in 30 minutes or that left a lot of room for additional story creation, yet at the same time's it's slow pace and sad melancholy allows for the very deep complex and delicate themes to work its way down and make it a little bit easier to ease into it. Bottom-line is that here we have a C-story-line that is being told as an A-story-line with all the emotional subtleties and the quiet/slow timing that a C-story-line require.
Definitely an existential film that questions the process of reinvention of the self and the how much control you have given the influence of external factors (including your own addictions – aka addiction to another person) and co-dependency on a certain reality that you have come to depend upon as "real". The film's biggest flaw is that it was classified as a Science Fiction rather than Experimental or Surreal.
While watching I was reminded of the firs translation I ever read of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which has been seen as the first Science Fiction novel ever written. Also, similar to this film, it lacked a definitely story definition, but rather presented the "experience of" a certain journey.
I would, for myself, give this film an 9 star rating, but down this to 7, because I think that in presentation, it does not allow itself to reach as wide an audience as it could.
Identicals, not very aptly titled, is like a slow hand that keeps testing your borders as a viewer with its sensual cinematography and a very intense focused story-line that plays away from the usual action based plot lines, but rather becomes a cat and mouse of reactions. It sits very difficult from a psychological point of view since it uses very subtle nuances in film making to keep the viewer feeling uncomfortable and I think this discomfort has probably been experienced by many to be "boredom".
We are uncertain throughout who is the cat and who is the mouse while the story unfolds and the two main players keep pushing back and forth testing boundaries and trying to find each other's " you" factor.
It is The Nines (2007) meets Melancholia (2011) meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).
Far from perfect, I felt that this was a story that could have either be told as a short film in 30 minutes or that left a lot of room for additional story creation, yet at the same time's it's slow pace and sad melancholy allows for the very deep complex and delicate themes to work its way down and make it a little bit easier to ease into it. Bottom-line is that here we have a C-story-line that is being told as an A-story-line with all the emotional subtleties and the quiet/slow timing that a C-story-line require.
Definitely an existential film that questions the process of reinvention of the self and the how much control you have given the influence of external factors (including your own addictions – aka addiction to another person) and co-dependency on a certain reality that you have come to depend upon as "real". The film's biggest flaw is that it was classified as a Science Fiction rather than Experimental or Surreal.
While watching I was reminded of the firs translation I ever read of Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, which has been seen as the first Science Fiction novel ever written. Also, similar to this film, it lacked a definitely story definition, but rather presented the "experience of" a certain journey.
I would, for myself, give this film an 9 star rating, but down this to 7, because I think that in presentation, it does not allow itself to reach as wide an audience as it could.