(This review was published in slightly different form on Cinescene.)


JESSE EISENBERG IN THE DOUBLE

Shoved aside by one's doppelganger

Richard Ayoade, already popular in the UK for his "The IT Crowd" TV participation, made a great impression with his distinctive debut feature, the charming period coming of age flick Submarine. His new one, which a colleague warned me was "a mind fuck," is a pleasure too, as handsomely produced as Submarine but darker. (It may be a disadvantage that the field is crowded with cinematic doubles, with the more soulful and handsome Jake Gyllenhaal duplicated in the starring role of Denis Villeneuve's Enemy and Annette Benning in a double movie currently showing, The Face of Love.) Based on Dostoevsky's novella, coadapted with Harmony Korine's brother Avi, Ayaode's The Double, which stars Jesse Eisenberg, is, by its maker's admission, much indebted for its mood and style to Terry Gilliam's Brazil and Orson Welles' version of Kafka's The Trial. The director would have badly failed in his aim if this film could be described as remotely charming, but there are moments when one would like to take up the protagonist, Simon James, as played by Eisenberg, and soothe and pet him.

Simon is a faceless corporate drone, whose lazier but more aggressive duplicate is first spookily glimpsed by Simon in the subway. Looking and dressing exactly the same, Simon's alter ego arrives at the company and is at once hailed by everybody as the bright young thing, especially by company manager Mr. Papadopoulos (Wallace Shawn). (Up above everything in this Orwellian world styled via Gilliam is The Colonel, a barely glimpsed James Fox, lending an aura of legend. Ayoade knows how to use casting resonantly, and gives a number of his Submarine actors memorable walk-ons.)

The wilier, more politick version of Simon James is James Simon. To simplify matters we'll call the wimpy self Simon and the new more testosterone-rich one James, as in Franco. But when James and Simon began flitting back and forth in the same frame one grasps the relevance of the term "mind fuck." When the self and its doppelganger get in touch and start helping each other and taking each other's appointments, like deceitful twins, even though Eisenberg does play James with a confident glow and Simon with a pitiful falter, it remains confusing.

What's certainly clear without a diagram is that James quickly overshadows Simon and makes him virtually disappear, stealing his girl, or the girl he dreams of making his, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), and snitching his arcane research for the company, which Mr. Papadopoulos ignored but now greets, coming from James, as brilliant. While Simon has never been recognized by anybody even after seven years at the company, and constantly gets his ID vetted, James is instantly persona grata.

The first half hour of The Double is its best of times, when the well-oiled physical business, delivered thorough finely honed mise-en-scene and precise editing, elucidates Simon's manifold frustrations -- every transaction is interrupted, every door shuts automatically in his face -- so neatly that each failure almost seems like a triumph for its hapless victim, who becomes the star of an intricate dance. Every gesture, every interruption, shows what Simon is up against, even before James arrives to complicate his life.

That complication also opens up an awareness of new possibilities for Simon. If somebody who looks just like him can be confident and successful and attractive to the ladies, well, why can't he? This message is a trite one hidden behind all the visual and narrative ingenuity. But that has to compete with the more doctrinaire maxim that corporate life crushes the ego -- or, in the more Dostoevskian extreme, drives one mad. What are these truisms, though, but a rack on which to hang Ayoade's playful exercises in style and character?

The Double is certainly not an example of sophomore slump. It's far too brilliantly produced, well acted, and handsome to look at for that. Every minor character is a pleasure to watch, amped up almost to Kubrickian levels. But one misses the warmth and charm of Submarine, which was also I guess funnier and more fun. Ayoade has absorbed his new stylistic influences almost too well; he needs to get his own groove back. And with this degree of accomplishment and skill, he likely will.

The Double, 93 mins., which is a Magnolia PIctures release, debuted at Toronto in fall 2013, followed by London and Glasgow. It was screened for this review as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center-Museum of Modern Art series New Directors/New Films, with showings Monday, March 24, 9:00pm (Lincoln Center) and Saturday, March 29, 6:30pm (MoMA).

It has theatrical openings coming in the UK 4 April 2014 and France 11 June. It comes out here Friday, 9 May.

_________________
©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.