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#618 - Enemy
Denis Villeneuve, 2013
A college professor discovers that he has an identical double who works as a small-time actor.
It's interesting to see a director follow up their fairly accessible mainstream breakthrough with a film that seems deliberately engineer to alienate any newfound fans. Just as Nicolas Winding Refn followed up his slick crime thriller Drive with the incredibly difficult Only God Forgives, so too does Denis Villeneuve follow up the respectable ensemble drama of Prisoners with a weird little film called Enemy. The premise seems slightly familiar; college professor Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is leading a fairly boring life where the only issue is his emotionally distant relationship with his girlfriend (Mélanie Laurent). While watching a film recommended to him by a stranger, Adam notices that one of the background extras looks exactly like him. He soon discovers that the extra (Gyllenhaal again) is a small-time actor named Anthony, who lives in the same city with his pregnant wife (Sarah Gadon). Adam becomes a bit obsessed with the implications of Anthony's existence, struggling to think about how to handle the situation - meanwhile, when Anthony learns of the same thing he also starts to change...
I give Enemy credit for trying to offer an unorthodox mystery film that's built on an extremely minimal cast and script. There's also a lot to be said for the sickly colour scheme that only ever seems to consist of different shades of yellow (occasionally veering into light orange or light green), plus some significant use of light-dark contrast that evokes Roger Deakins' style even without his presence. Gyllenhaal pulls some strong double-duty as the vastly different doppelgangers, though he arguably works better as the neurotic Adam more so than the confident Anthony. Both performances are decent enough to compensate for a lack of other characters, though Laurent and Gadon do well enough in comparatively small roles as Adam and Anthony's respective partners. There's even a bit part for Isabella Rosselini as Adam's mother, which she naturally does well despite having a couple of minutes on-screen. Of course, thanks to the inherent vagueness of the central identity-crisis plot it struggles to be consistently compelling or intriguing across its extremely brief running time. Enemy does throw in the odd surprise here and there but it is ultimately a pretty standard excuse for an experimental thriller.
Denis Villeneuve, 2013
A college professor discovers that he has an identical double who works as a small-time actor.
It's interesting to see a director follow up their fairly accessible mainstream breakthrough with a film that seems deliberately engineer to alienate any newfound fans. Just as Nicolas Winding Refn followed up his slick crime thriller Drive with the incredibly difficult Only God Forgives, so too does Denis Villeneuve follow up the respectable ensemble drama of Prisoners with a weird little film called Enemy. The premise seems slightly familiar; college professor Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is leading a fairly boring life where the only issue is his emotionally distant relationship with his girlfriend (Mélanie Laurent). While watching a film recommended to him by a stranger, Adam notices that one of the background extras looks exactly like him. He soon discovers that the extra (Gyllenhaal again) is a small-time actor named Anthony, who lives in the same city with his pregnant wife (Sarah Gadon). Adam becomes a bit obsessed with the implications of Anthony's existence, struggling to think about how to handle the situation - meanwhile, when Anthony learns of the same thing he also starts to change...
I give Enemy credit for trying to offer an unorthodox mystery film that's built on an extremely minimal cast and script. There's also a lot to be said for the sickly colour scheme that only ever seems to consist of different shades of yellow (occasionally veering into light orange or light green), plus some significant use of light-dark contrast that evokes Roger Deakins' style even without his presence. Gyllenhaal pulls some strong double-duty as the vastly different doppelgangers, though he arguably works better as the neurotic Adam more so than the confident Anthony. Both performances are decent enough to compensate for a lack of other characters, though Laurent and Gadon do well enough in comparatively small roles as Adam and Anthony's respective partners. There's even a bit part for Isabella Rosselini as Adam's mother, which she naturally does well despite having a couple of minutes on-screen. Of course, thanks to the inherent vagueness of the central identity-crisis plot it struggles to be consistently compelling or intriguing across its extremely brief running time. Enemy does throw in the odd surprise here and there but it is ultimately a pretty standard excuse for an experimental thriller.