Enemy | Review

Identical/Identity: Villeneuve’s Doppelganger Thriller a Kafkaesque Dead Ringer

You can forget the pulpy throes of the dark hearted Prisoners, the recently released collaboration of Jake Gyllenhaal and director Denis Villeneuve, when you sit down for their latest release, Enemy (which was actually filmed first). In the fine tradition of doppelganger cinema, this is certainly a spectacular standout. And if any evidence is needed to point to Villeneuve as a director at the top of his game, look no further. Certain to confuse, perplex, and even irritate, it’s a beautiful, nightmarishly warped universe ripe for multiple readings and psychological explanations concerning hidden desires and oppositions.

A history professor at a Toronto university, Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal), seems to be living a lackluster existence, his life a series of repetitive instances mired in work and an unenthusiastic relationship with his girlfriend (Melanie Laurent). A co-worker recommends that Adam see a film called Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way after a banal conversation, and when Adam rents the film, he happens to notice that one of the actors playing a very minor supporting character is his exact double. Discovering the actor’s real name is Anthony Clare, Adam travels to Mississauga to investigate, eventually making contact with Anthony’s pregnant wife, Helen (Sarah Gadon). This evokes tension in the Clare household, as Helen suspects the strange scenario as nothing more than a ruse to hide Anthony’s philandering ways. But the eventual meeting of the doubles instills a feeling of alarm in Adam, who consults his mother (Isabella Rossellini) about the possibility that he could have a brother. This angle proves fruitless, but lunch with mom becomes more unsettling for other reasons.

Based on the novel The Double by Jose Saramago (whose work was also the basis for the 2008 film, Blindness), Villeneuve gives us one of the most unappealing visions you’re apt to see of Toronto. Filmed in a yellow, hazy smog, filled with foreboding and looming high-rises, the city looks like an insect caught in the amber hues of some hellish nightmare. Javier Gullon’s script and Nicolas Bolduc’s cinematography give us various clues for interpreting hidden meanings. “Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered” an opening title warns us, perhaps provoking us to pick up on a series of intricate patterns and organized doublings apparent before we can even differentiate between the Gyllenhaals.

The main protagonist, Adam Bell, a history professor (presented as the first version, aptly named Adam, surname Bell, perhaps a nod to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of now rudimentary communicative technology), gives us key information in his repeated lecture to his class with quotes from Hegel (“Everything in history happens twice,”) and Marx, who stated that the first go round is a tragedy and the second is a farce. And so we see the two Jakes, one living a rather somber and structured life and in a somewhat tepid relationship with Melanie Laurent, while the other Jake, an aspiring actor (with two separate names), lives out the farce of a troubled marriage with Sarah Gadon.

The casting of Gadon and Laurent is equally important due to their strikingly similar appearance, as is the association of females with arachnids, an insect associated with femininity—the weaver of life’s thread (a large spider draped over the cityscape in one scene recalls Harriet Andersson’s vision of God as a giant spider in Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly, 1961). But the threads can also be a trap, and webs feature prominently throughout Enemy, from the cracked car of a windshield to the overlay of the transit system’s overhanging lines. A strange, secret society of men that gather to watch naked women in a highly stylized environment a la Eyes Wide Shut also helps us to visually associate the body of the pregnant female with that of the spider (perhaps the version of the female that induces aversion rather attraction).

The discovery of an aforementioned key late in the game perhaps explains that fantastic final scene that is unforgettable and unsettling. Compelling, suggestive, and gorgeously shot, Enemy is not to be missed, one of those rare mind fuck puzzles worthy of multiple viewings.

★★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆