Review: 'Enemy'
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJuaAWrgoUY
Review: 'Charlie Countryman'
Much of the buzz attributed to Charlie Countryman comes from the entertainment news headline ‘Shia LaBeouf drops acid for movie role.’ LaBeouf, in an interview, explained his reasons for doing so as “There’s a way to do an acid trip like Harold and Kumar and there’s a way to be on acid. What I know of acting, Sean Penn actually strapped up to that electric chair in Dead Man Walking. These are the guys that I look up to.”
Charlie Countryman plays out like a stylish, psychedelic adult fairy tale and has successfully blended a few genres to create a beautiful surrealist action flick.
The film begins with a depressive and lost young man, Charlie Countryman (Shia LaBeouf) as he loses his mother, Katie (Melissa Leo). The mystical nature of the film begins immediately, as Charlie speaks with his mother’s ghost and is mysteriously told to go to Bucharest. From here, he makes a drug addled, almost dream-like pilgrimage through Romania and becomes enamored with a young woman named Gabi (Evan Rachel Wood). Soon, Gabi’s ex-husband, Nigel (Mads Mikkelsen), finds out Charlie’s intention to steal his woman and spends the rest of the film partnering up with his crime cronies to try and kill Charlie.
Charlie Countryman is not perfect, but this film is stylish beyond words in all aspects including cinematography, editing and soundtrack choices, all the way down to LaBeouf’s wardrobe.
This film, at times, almost calls to mind Denis Johnson’s collection of short stories entitled Jesus’ Son, in that it strives to create a universe is which drug use, sex and violence make up a sort of holy path to enlightenment. There is also the blatant underlining of death in both of these works, as they relate to these “holy” factors, especially in Charlie Countryman.
Charlie Countryman will be bashed for its unlikely coincidences, plot issues and probably most of all, style over substance, but in my mind, the film should be applauded simply for its aesthetic and overall tone. Many of the chase scenes are in slow motion, backed by gorgeous, hypnotic tunes and also, at times, fast paced electronic music. In these aspects, the film is almost reminiscent of a music video. In fact, some of the shots in the film look like they could have been pulled from the Sigur Ros short film he was a part of, which is another hip and rather experimental work on his resume. Soon to come is Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, which may just finally pull Labeouf out of his ‘transformers kid’ phase once and for all.
Charlie Countryman is not an action film where the hero is blessed with extravagant victories. In fact, for most of the film, Charlie is either running or being beaten to death. He’s a fool who won’t take no for an answer, even when a gun is hot in his throat or a plastic bag is tightly pulled over his face nearly suffocating him. He is unafraid to die and almost seems like an angel wandering around a Romanian hell.
Charlie Countryman is not perfect, but this film is stylish beyond words in all aspects including cinematography, editing and soundtrack choices, all the way down to LaBeouf’s wardrobe. I’ll take this over a traditional action flick any day of the week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqnstjzPtfo