Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy

4th March 2014

With award season and the Olympics done and over with, and hardly any promising films coming out for a few weeks, most people are going to have more than their share of time to catch up on any movies they may have missed in theaters. Aside from catching up on those award show favorites you never got around to seeing, there’s one more film you should add to your list; Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy. No, you’ve probably never heard of Enemy, but critics and audiences who have seen it are raving about its mind-bending plot and surreal subject matter.

In Enemy, based on the 2005 novel The Double by Jose Saramago, Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Adam Bell, a college professor living a relatively normal, if not boring, existence with his girlfriend (played by Melanie Laurent). During one of his quiet evenings, he rents a movie and notices an extra on film who bears a striking resemblance to him. Out of curiosity, he searches for more information about this doppelganger and discovers he’s an unsuccessful actor named David Saint Clair. It’s clear that Adam’s not mentally healthy as he starts to shadow David with intense interest. His instability is further made clear by a series of recurring dreams that leave him gasping for air.

When the two men finally meet they discover that everything about them is identical, down to matching scars on their chests. The similarities between the two men stop at the superficial, however. While Adam lives a quietly normal existence and appears logical and well-read, David is wild and free, both in his personality and in his morals (which you’ll find out as you observe him in a sex club while his pregnant wife sits at home).

As Adam tries to get to the bottom of this odd situation, a meeting with his mother (Isabella Rossellini) does little to set him straight or provide many answers. Director Villeneuve purposefully doesn’t answer the question on everyone’s mind, including both men, for the bulk of the film. The veil of mystery over the film allows Villeneuve to showcase what Variety’s Peter Debruge calls “an impressive mastery of tone as it pertains to both the sound design and visuals, the pace defies contempo comfort levels, unfolding like a slow-motion, spied-through-amber episode of The Twilight Zone”.

The film is currently airing exclusively on DirecTV VOD and streaming services (check out their homepage for details) as part of a deal made between DirecTV and A24 Films. There’s no word yet of a nationwide distribution deal, so this is likely your best bet to see the film in the near future, something you should do, since Gyllenhaal has received rave reviews for his performance (or should we say performances?). Film critic Travis Hopson called Gyllenhaal “mesmerizing” in his review for Examiner.com and Complex’s Matt Barone said of the actor “Gyllenhaal’s on fire throughout Enemy—the controlled ways in which he separates the men by their individual eccentricities are quite extraordinary.” It’s clear that he’s returned to the genre where he should be, his indie roots, after a few years chasing after the blockbuster action star dream.

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