Something to watch tonight: Thursday 22 May

Three Identical Strangers (Wardle, 2018)

This gem of a doc­u­ment­ary has just landed on Netflix in New Zealand but it would be easy to miss.

I wrote about it in a New Zealand International Film Festival pre­view art­icle for RNZ back in July 2018:

… it’s a mar­vel­lous story that I can’t stop think­ing about. It starts off with a great premise – against the odds, three identic­al sib­lings sep­ar­ated at birth and adop­ted in to three dif­fer­ent fam­il­ies find each oth­er and take advant­age of their new fame to live the high life in 80s Manhattan – but then unveils a con­spir­acy so hein­ous you will be temp­ted to rip the arm­rests off your seat and hurl them at the screen.

There are a few NZIFF doc­u­ment­ar­ies that have become legendary in the way their stor­ies bloom beau­ti­fully and sur­pris­ingly in front of unsus­pect­ing audi­ences. Deep Water in 2006 about the ill-fated round-the-world yachts­man Donald Crowhurst was one. In 2007, Crazy Love about the frankly inex­plic­able Pugach mar­riage, was anoth­er. Three Identical Strangers belongs in that company.

Also fea­tured in that pre­view: drama A Kid Like Jake about com­pet­it­ive New York par­ents try­ing to get their pre­co­cious kid into a pres­ti­gi­ous kinder­garten; doc­u­ment­ary Bisbee ’17 about the amaz­ing efforts of a small town in Arizona to com­mem­or­ate the cen­ten­ary of a shock­ing and scan­dal­ous event in the town’s his­tory by recre­at­ing it as drama – I think about this film often – and the charm­ing German romance In the Aisles.

Further reading

I was very proud to have been asked by NZ On Screen to write the pro­file of loc­al act­or Joel Tobeck. His career has been so long and so var­ied that, I’m told, this is the second longest pro­file on the site after Taika Waititi:

After the suc­cess of Strangers, Tobeck audi­tioned for NZ Drama School (now Toi Whakaari) but was told that his career was going well enough that he prob­ably didn’t need it. Instead, he took a sur­pris­ing turn: a year train­ing in con­tem­por­ary dance at the Auckland Performing Arts School (now Unitec) along­side luminar­ies like Neil Ieremia and Sean MacDonald.

Tobeck believes that his year as a dan­cer helped with his act­ing. “Especially when I was play­ing in Hercules and Xena and all those shows where I was play­ing crazy gods, you had to be wacky and, you know, very phys­ic­al. That back­ground I had in con­tem­por­ary dance was amaz­ing, because any dan­cer will tell you, you’re in tune with every part of your body. And so for me to have to express myself like that in these shows. It was a great edu­ca­tion in that respect.”

He was such a neat guy to inter­view and espe­cially for­giv­ing when I for­got to press ‘record’ on the second half of our con­ver­sa­tion neces­sit­at­ing a second take.

Where to watch Three Identical Strangers

Aotearoa, Australia & India: Streaming on Netflix

Canada: Streaming on SundanceNow or Mubi

Ireland & UK: Digital rental

USA: Streaming on Kanopy