Enemy (Denis Villeneuve)

[Mysterious Dude]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2316411/

[Rowland]

A return to form for Villeneuve after the disappointing Prisoners, which was a handsome but anonymously mounted for-hire job, whereas this feels like a distinct expression of idiosyncratic sensibilities. He even reprises a memorable shot from his great Polytechnique for a playfully unsettling effect. Also, between that film and now this sharing similar thematic DNA, I wonder if Denis has some personal demons that he's grappling with regarding women.

[Grouchy]

Two great thrillers in one year is nothing to sneer at.

[baby doll]

I prefer his early, funny movies. That said, I wouldn't have objected to the film being as unrelentingly grim as it is if I had found any part of its story convincing.

[baby doll]

Also, between that film and now this sharing similar thematic DNA, I wonder if Denis has some personal demons that he's grappling with regarding women.

He's certainly the most Catholic of Canadian directors: Un août 32 sur terre is about a woman who's obsessed with getting pregnant, while Maelström (easily his best movie) opens with the heroine getting an abortion.

[Irish]

Can someone explain to me what the spider imagery was supposed to represent? It seemed fairly clear cut at first but the final shot really threw me.

[TGM]

I'd say that this is an interesting video to watch that presents quite a few theories on the film, including what the spider's represent: http://channelawesome.com/renegade-cut-enemy/

[baby doll]

I was going to post this on my blog with another short review that I never got around to writing, so I'll just dump it on here for posterity's sake or whatever:

Whatever happened to Denis Villeneuve, the talented Québécois director who, after making such promising early films as Un août 32 sur le terre (1998) and Maelström (2000), seemed to disappear from the face of the earth for nearly a decade? There's mounting evidence to suggest that he was abducted by flying saucers some time in the 2000s and replaced by an alien doppelgänger that takes himself way too seriously. Based on The Double, a 2002 novel by José Saramago which I haven't read, the impostor's latest movie, Enemy (2013), tells the story of a bored history professor (Jake Gyllenhaal) who's tired of screwing his slatternly girlfriend (Mélanie Laurent), and though it never occurs to him that he might feel better if shaved his beard, took Prozac, or redecorated his dingy apartment, I doubt it would do much good as the film's hyperbolically drab settings suggest that his dissatisfaction is indicative of some pervasive social malaise caused by modern life—and is therefore inevitable.

One evening while watching an inane Canadian movie on his laptop, Gloomy Gus notices an extra who looks just like him and decides to look him up on Google, though what he finds is neither his repressed self (as in Bernardo Bertolucci's Partner [1968]) nor his brother from another culture (as in Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle [1985]), but merely a more upscale version of himself living in an antiseptically tasteful condo that no struggling actor could possibly afford—even if it is in Mississauga—with an angelic blonde (Sarah Gadon) whom he's tired of screwing. It's a situation that has a lot of potential despite its familiarity, but the screenplay by Javier Gullón takes it in a thoroughly unconvincing direction with Gloomy Gus lending his girlfriend to the double for a weekend because the plot requires him to. And as in the films of Christopher Nolan, the silliness of the script is magnified rather than obscured by the sombre art direction which suppresses blues and greens, and the portentous score that sounds like a cello throwing up over and over.

[Grouchy]

Thank you for reminding me that there's nothing more embarassing than a reviewer who only thinks he's witty all the time.

[Dukefrukem]

Can someone explain to me what the spider imagery was supposed to represent? It seemed fairly clear cut at first but the final shot really threw me.

I had the same reaction. Has this been explained anywhere?