Three Identical Strangers review: Mind-boggling documentary about triplets separated at birth

The film begins in an upbeat and charming fashion as a feelgood, human interest story but grows gradually darker

Dir: Tim Wardle; Featuring: Silvi Alzetta-Reali, Eddy Galland, Ron Guttman, David Kellman, Evan LeRose, Adrian Lichter. 12A, 97 mins

Disney meets David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers in Tim Wardle’s mind-boggling feature documentary. The film begins in upbeat and charming fashion as a feelgood, human interest story but grows gradually darker and more disturbing. Its main subjects are three identical triplets who come from the same New York adoption agency. Although they grew up in fairly close proximity to one another, none of the three boys were aware of the existence of their siblings. 

The film starts with one of the twins admitting he wouldn’t believe the story if he wasn’t directly involved in it. Bobby Shafran talks about arriving at a college for the first time in the early Eighties and having the uncanny experience of everyone there seemingly already knowing who he was.

He had the same grin, same hair, same “meaty hands” and same expression as Eddie Galland, who was thought to have left the college. Bobby tracked Eddie down. They realised they were indeed twin brothers and doppelgangers. Then a third, David, came out of the woodwork.

The three youngsters got on famously. They shared the same tastes and enthusiasms – and even smoked the same brand of cigarettes. As their celebrity magnified, they partied at Studio 54, appeared together ogling Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan and eventually opened their own restaurant. They seemed almost like vaudeville entertainers.

It is at this point, though, that the darkness seeps into the tale. We learn about the sinister adoption agency, Louise Wise Services, and about the psychologist, Dr Peter Neubauer, behind an infernal experiment in social engineering through which Jewish twins (and often their older sisters, too) had been separated at birth and placed with families from different backgrounds.

Neubauer, who died in 2008, wasn’t just exploring the age-old nature vs nurture debate. He was looking at approaches to parenting, genetics and mental illness. He can’t help but come across like a Bond villain or a Mengele-like scientist. Given that he began the twin experiment only a quarter of a century after the end of the Second World War, it is hard not to see his work through the prism of the Holocaust.

What is even more shocking than the research itself is the high-handed certainty of the scientists and the senior staff at the adoption agency that they weren’t doing anything wrong. Even today, some still seem to think it was acceptable to intervene in these families’ lives and to treat the vulnerable kids as lab rats.

Director Wardle and his team have an astonishing story to tell. They tackle it in relatively conventional and restrained fashion with talking head interviews, one or two dramatic reconstructions and clever use of archive. The film is both uplifting and terribly depressing.

Lawrence Wright, the New Yorker journalist whose writing and research also inspired the recent documentary, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, is a prominent presence. In the mid-1990s, he was one of the first to investigate Neubauer. A laconic Texan, he talks about the most bizarre events in a matter of fact fashion which only adds to the eeriness of the documentary.