Monday, March 5, 1984
By Tom Shales As tantalizing prospects go, about the only way to improve on casting Jane Seymour in a TV movie is to cast two Jane Seymours in a TV movie, which is precisely what the producers of ABCÛªs ÛÏDark MirrorÛ'have done, and to captivating effect. The film, at 9 tonight on'Channel 7, is sumptuously updated film noir that can be taken as low drama or high comedy, or as a little bit of each.</br></br>twins, one as nice as pie and the other as mean as dirt. Seymour is witty, sly and wildly watchable as both, and the special effects boys occasionally put them on screen together in such niftily seamless ways that the trickery boggles the eye. In one shot, one sister Seymour not only sits beside herself on the couch but actually puts her head on the other sister SeymourÛªs lap.</br></br>More than one trend-watcher in recent months has declared the TV movie to have ÛÏcome of ageÛ because subjects tackled this season have included the end of the world and incest. All very well, but TV movies have always had a pretty good record on grappling with dicey topics. ItÛªs more a sign of coming of age that a film with only trifling ambitions like ÛÏDark MirrorÛ can fulfil them with such rich character and that director Richard Lang, also the producer, got to flex his stylistic muscles and give the film a distinctively velvety texture, not just the usual assembly-line gloss.</br></br>ÛÏDark MirrorÛ is more fun and more competently brought off than all five hours of ÛÏLaceÛ put together, which they werenÛªt.</br></br>The story is elegant hokum. It opens with a deftly shot murder sequence that might be called ÛÏDonÛªt shoot the piano playerÛÓnot when thereÛªs a knife handy.Û From there we are drawn into a serviceable semi-psychological mystery. Tracy, the bad twin, and Lee, the nice twin, are bound by inscrutable ties, ties that blind in LeeÛªs case, because she doesnÛªt manage to notice that her sister tries to kill her with an overdose of sleeping pills and, when that fails, tries to drive her insane by turning on MTV in the middle of the night (and thatÛªll do it, yes sir).