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.

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