the Two Jakes

Ever wonder what Denis Villeneuve did before breaking out? Watch Enemy (2013), you might be surprised.

It starts in a sophisticated sex club where a woman erotically crushes a tarantula under her Cuban heel. Then we meet Jake Gyllenhall as a depressed history teacher in Toronto. He has a beautiful girlfriend, Melanie Laurent, with whom he has depressing sex (not clear what the problem is, though). When a colleague asks him what he does for fun, he doesn't know how to answer. The colleague suggests watching movies, like a light comedy he saw. So Gyllenhall rents it.

It doesn't seem to cheer him up much. But he does notice that one of the actors in a minor role looks a lot like him (played by Gyllenhall, of course). He finds out who the actor is and starts stalking him. He goes to the actor's agent, and everyone there thinks it's him. They even give him a confidential letter. He calls the actors place, and his wife (Sarah Gadon) assumes that it's the actor playing a joke. 

After quite a bit of this, the doppelgangers meet, and find they are indeed identical. But the actor is simple, happy, a bit thoughtless, maybe even threatening. When they split up, the actor starts stalking the teacher. When he sees Laurent, he likes what he sees. So he accuses the teacher of sleeping with his wife, and demands a chance to sleep with his wife to make it even. Although this doesn't make any sense, the teacher agrees. Maybe he's just that gormless, maybe he's interested in Gadon. Maybe it's something deeper. 

I'll skip the denouement, except to mention that there's a touch of surrealism to it. The movie has many scenes of smoggy Toronto, with thick yellow air. But in one such scene, a huge spider, taller than the CN Tower, walks through the city. 

There wasn't much of the grandeur and beauty of, say, Arrival on display here. Most of it is very drab - on purpose, I am sure. There's also the drabness of the teacher character, another man too depressed to lift his head. The subplot of the crushing fetish pays off in the end, or does it? All in all, not a very fun movie, and less thought-provoking than I expected. 

However, Isabella Rossellini played the teacher's mother, a somewhat cold bohemian sculptor. She assures her son that he doesn't have a twin, and I wish we got to see more of her.