Sometimes it takes an outsider to identify solutions to a problem. For example? Jake Gyllenhaal seemed to have lost his way of late, playing charmless lunkheads and anonymous action heroes. Enter Quebec director Denis Villeneuve (Incendies), who’s quickly steered him back on track by recognizing that the sturdy actor is best as a fragile, obsessive, anxiety-ridden mess (as in Zodiac, his career high point).
Villeneuve and Gyllenhaal follow up last year’s Prisoners with another stylish thriller. However, whereas their previous collaboration was the cinematic equivalent of a pulpy page-turner, Enemy is more akin to riddle that’s heavy on symbolism, parallels and metaphor. Staid Toronto history professor Adam (Gyllenhaal, truly exceptional here) is startled to discover his perfect döppelganger in the background of a movie scene. Tracking down the actor (also portrayed by Gyllenhaal), he realizes too late the high cost of meddling with the uncanny.
Enemy isn’t shy about wearing its influences on its sleeve (or slapping a telling Vertigo poster on a wall), with David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers an obvious influence. However, Villeneuve immerses us in a perverse, hallucinatory realm of his own design. Titillating and confounding in equal measure, there’s almost the sense that you’ve wandered into someone else’s dream, leaving you aroused by the intimacy, yet aware that you must escape before being found out.
The mystery that Villeneuve spins here cleverly dispenses its vague clues, demanding that the viewer be the one to assign some order to a seemingly irrational scenario. However, the moment you think you have Enemy cracked, the filmmaker plays a trump card that forces you to piece it all together again.
