The 'futuristic' conceit here is that the dying can provide comfort for everyone that cares about them by having themselves duplicated.
The replacements then have a short period in which to 'imprint' on their originals. Karen Gillan's character Sarah, faced with terminal illness, opts for this process, and the indebtedness it implies, but from the outset there are some imperfections in the replication, minor defects are that are nevertheless taken as significant improvements by Sarah's mother and partner.
And then all of a sudden Sarah is no longer dying, and the law only permits one version of her to persist.
Sarah is clearly not especially good at life, but believes it is worth fighting for anyway. Her double possibly possesses the personality tweaks necessary to be a bit better at it, but the duel (a word I think has been cunningly camouflaged in the title) will ultimately undermine her more self-confident approach.
Dual is billed as 'Science Fiction', but like the scenarios in the novels of José Saramago, it isn't really, for this take on cloning is less of a projection of technology, and more of a fable where the key anxiety might well be social: life in Finland (where it was shot), or at least a society where everyone seems to be interacting in an affectless, deadpan fashion, on the edge of abject misery.
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