Having just caught up with Denis Villeneuve’s nail-biting mystery thriller Prisoners on VOD, I was blown away by how tense the director managed to make every scene, regardless of what was going on. (Admittedly, most of the things going on were pretty tense after the first twenty minutes or so.) As such, it made me even more excited for his next film, the doppelgänger drama Enemy, which I didn’t think was possible. He also worked with Jake Gyllenhaal for this film, or perhaps it was around 14 Jake Gyllenhaals, assuming this second Enemy poster is anything to go by.
In the movie, which is based on the novel by Jose Saramago, Gyllenhaal plays Adam Bell, a schlub of a professor who is dumbfounded when he watches a movie based on a recommendation and finds his exact double in an actor named Anthony Clair. His task then becomes trying to figure out who this guy really is and why they appear to be identical. But as a side quest, he manages to loop himself in with the duplicate’s lady, played by Sarah Gadot, turning this oddball narrative into something a tad more risqué than the average thriller. Or perhaps just as risqué, but with more doppel-banging.
So I’m not even quite sure what the poster, via IMP is trying to tell us. Is it saying that there are a never-ending line of these two characters, and only one has figured out what’s going on? Also, I like the contrast between the black and white atop the deep red, but is that supposed to be an "enemy line" they’re standing on? If so, I may have lost all respect for this thing.
Below you’ll find a couple of new images from the film, one showcasing the pulled-back hair of co-star Sarah Gadot and the other is of the director talking to Gyllenhaal. No sign of other co-stars Isabella Rossellini, Mélanie Laurent or Jane Moffat though.
Nothing too showy or exciting in those, though that crib in the background of the first shot means that sexual relationship between Helen and Adam could get even more sinister than I’d imagined. For more on Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal, take a peek at the video below from the TIFF YouTube page, which features the duo talking about the difference between working on this film and Prisoners.
We can look forward to this film getting a release date at some point this spring, at which point I’ll be counting the days until I can double feature it with Richard Ayoade’s The Double. Because that’s what you have to do with movies like this.
For a slightly better look at Enemy in action, here’s the strangely paced teaser trailer.
