Enemy

Director Denis Villeneuve reteams with his Prisoners star Jake Gyllenhaal for Enemy, a stylish and surreal psychological thriller about identity. Gyllenhaal plays Adam, a young history professor living a dull life in Toronto with his girlfriend (Mélanie Laurent of Hidden Love, Inglourious Basterds, and Beginners). When a colleague recommends a recent movie to Adam, he spots a bit player in the film that looks exactly like him. The passive, antisocial teacher then embarks on a quest to track down his doppleganger. 

While the film is too intentionally inscrutable to be totally satisfying, it’s genuinely creepy and mysterious. There’s no solvable puzzle aspect to the story (this is not Memento, thank goodness) but there is a lot for the viewer to chew on when the movie’s over. The fact that Adam is a history teacher who gives a lackluster lecture to his class about the ways totalitarian governments control their citizens, could be a clue to the picture’s overriding theme. Unfortunately, flaws in individual beats confound the cumulative enigmatic quality of the overall film. There are a number of events that strain credibility. For example: in an early scene, Adam tracks down the former address of the actor he’s looking for. When he goes to the building, the doorman naturally mistakes Adam for his look-a-like, and Adam learns that the actor hasn’t lived there for a long time. Yet when Adam asks if he has any mail, the doorman suddenly remembers a package recently delivered for him. This clumsy exchange fails to build the mystery because the doorman character seems clueless rather than curious.  Also, despite the film’s twisty, elliptical structure, it’s not made clear if the colleague who suggests the movie that initiates Adam’s journey does so with that intention or if it’s a completely random occurrence. Perhaps this ambiguity is meant to heighten the film’s mystery, but its too crucial to the narrative to be left unexplained.

Still, there’s enough in Enemy to make me want to screen it again. It seems the kind of film that would benefit from multiple viewings. The strong cast, featuring Isabella Rossellini as Adam's mother, and Villeneuve’s sleek, deliberate pacing certainly encourage a second look. This is also a film that revels in its urban location. Enemy uses Toronto’s sharp angles and reflective facades as distinctly as Vertigo uses the steep hills, interconnected streets, and shadowy fog of San Francisco. While Toronto doubles for many cities in countless movies, we rarely get to see films that actually take place in this city. Like his fellow countryman David Cronenberg, Villeneuve has a knack for painting a distinctive portrait of an underutilized Canadian metropolis. Gyllenhaal, meanwhile, continues his streak of solid, unexpected choices in the films he makes and the performances he gives in them.  Enemy creates an eerie tension that Villeneuve mostly manages to sustain through out the film. While it is not on par with great dream/nightmare films like Mulholland Drive, its creepy ambiguity gets under your skin.