An intimate psychological film which elaborates the Faustian theme about the dispute between the body and the soul - a study on human identity. Two young doctors carry out the surgical exchange of the brains of two women who are dying after a car accident - a young girl and member of a criminal gang, and a lonely seventy-year-old associate professor of oriental studies. The young girl wakes from the operation thinking like the elderly intellectual and tries in vain to live with her new identity. (https://www.filmovyprehled.cz/en/film/22344/double-role)
Acting
Tereza Brodská's eerie elderly physicality
Direction
Jireš's clinical, dreamlike precision
Writing
Philosophical depth without pretension
Director
Jaromil Jireš
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Jireš was a key figure in the Czech New Wave; this late-career return to Faustian themes echoes his 1969 classic 'The Joke' in its interrogation of identity under oppressive systems.
The brain-swap premise was loosely inspired by real 1950s Soviet scientific experiments on dog head transplants, which Jireš reportedly discovered in archival materials.
CZ
