Enemy opens in some type of mysterious underground sex club, where women perform erotic acts with tarantulas. And here’s the thing: it only gets weirder from there.
Director Denis Villeneuve actually released two films at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The first of which, Prisoners, received critical acclaim and was included in many filmgoers’ top ten lists of 2013. Now with his film Enemy, he is pushing the psychological thriller genre to new boundaries. Part existential thriller and part hypersexual exploration of the subconscious, viewers have so far pegged Enemy in the same sentence as Hitchcock, Cronenberg, and Lynch, and this high company is well deserved.
Enemy stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell, a bored college professor who seems to constantly be lecturing to his students on the importance of repetition, specifically in relation to history. His relationship with his girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent) is exceptionally dull, other than bouts of animalistic sex. One night, Adam rents a film, in which he realizes that he shares an uncanny resemblance to “Bellhop #3.” Adam slowly becomes obsessed with this actor, and ultimately seeks him out to attempt to put reason to this odd dream-like realization. That’s all I really can say with certainty about the plot of this film.
Enemy is an episode of the twilight zone, shot like an arthouse film, with the sexual consciousness of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
Enemy is filled to the brim with bizarre and dream-like imagery, much of which, unfortunately for arachnophobes, involves spiders, women’s high heels, and sex. There is so much material to explore in this aspect that the film definitively requires multiple viewings.
Although Enemy is an impressive and impeccably well-made film, the elliptical, dense nature may be too strenuous for some viewers to handle. The film works with the slowest of slow burns and is overtly difficult to interpret. However, once the film hooks you, it’ll leave you watching so obsessively you’ll find yourself in a pile of your own drool.
Gyllenhaal is incredible in the film and does an absurdly fantastic job of creating two unique personalities between his two characters, which by the end of the film, are distinguishable just by facial expression. Sarah Gadon’s performance stands out as well as the doppelganger’s pregnant wife.
Cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc shoots the film with a rotten yellow tint, which adds to the atmosphere immensely. The aerial shots that look up into the skyscrapers will make you legs feel wobbly.
The moment the credits rolled on this film, I felt a number of things. I immediately became anxious for a second viewing. I wanted to sprint home and begin research on what others were saying about the film. I also felt my fear of spiders escalate tenfold. Enemy is an episode of the twilight zone, shot like an arthouse film, with the sexual consciousness of Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
