Rent Enemy (2014)

Enemy review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy is a fascinating thriller that is one of his most challenging and haunting pictures to date. It’s a case of identity as Jake Gyllenhaal plays two characters: a quiet college professor and a bitter actor. But this is far from your standard or sitcom-level case of doubles separated at birth. They don’t meet up with each other in an awkward mimic-mirror moment of comedy. They don’t go the route of the Prince and Pauper where they swap lives in that tired old device. Enemy instead chooses to focus sharply and artfully on the biggest issue with discovering your duplicate: a loss of individuality you cannot shake.

Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a creature of habit. He teaches a history class, comes home to his girlfriend and mostly keeps to himself. While watching a movie by himself, he notices one of the actors happens to look exactly like him. After some digging, he discovers this man is Anthony Claire (Jake Gyllenhaal) and takes it upon himself to learn more about this individual. He sneaks into his agency and receives a few more details about this actor. It isn’t long before he decides to call up Anthony and have a meeting that is strange and uncomfortable for both of them. Anthony grows paranoid of this individual as the marriage with his pregnant wife is on the rocks. This brings about his own means of revenge which takes a nasty and unexpected turn for the worst.

The central theme of the picture is about losing control of one’s world when presented with such a chaotic discovery. Adam’s life seems to follow a simple routine that is thrown out of balance the more he discovers about Anthony. He begins to lose track of the world around him as the city buildings seem to contort and twist around him, appearing to form a trap. Throughout the picture is the presence of spiders. The opening shot features Adam (or Anthony?) attending a secret stripper party in which one woman places a spider on the ground and begins to crush it with her foot. Sometimes he starts seeing spiders in the strangest place such as the faces of women that pass him by. And other times it just gets ridiculous as a long-legged arachnid looms over the city.

This bizarre imagery displays just how far deep Adam is caught in the web of danger with no means of escape. His double is present and robbing him of everything that made him different. In one of Adam’s lectures, he states that a totalitarian state will censor any means of individual expression. But who is censoring Adam? According to director Denis Villeneuve, it’s the uncontrollable force of one’s own internal dictator. Perhaps Adam secretly wants this fear in his life to shake up the dreary, yellow-tinted world he occupies.

Enemy is a character study that is as richly complex as its challenging visuals. Jake Gyllenhaal not only succeeds at playing dual roles, but creates real terror both self-inflicted and doled out to his opposite. It’s an incredibly intense thriller that takes the audience on a psychological trip through strange visuals that may or may not be hallucinations. The whole experience keeps you guessing right up to the final shot in which everything the protagonist has been running from confronts him head on just when he thinks he’s out of the woods. This is one heck of a movie puzzle to put together with powerful performances backing up such a deviously intriguing script.