If you were disappointed by the recent series finale of True Detective because it meticulously planted numerous clues to community supported misogyny and discussions of time being a flat circle only to litter the dark sky with unresolved plot points, well, Enemy might be for you.
For as much reverberation director Denis Villeneuve wants to stir in your brain, Enemy is a trying experience. There’s a sudden shriek, a sudden image and a sudden cut to make you feel like it’s a mindfuck, but the puzzle pieces aren’t that hard to reassemble. Enemy is a film that thinks it’s being immensely clever. What it really is doing is wasting two interesting actresses (Melanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon) to explore two “different” men (both played by Jake Gyllenhaal), who ultimately just want to screw the other one’s girl.
Gyllenhaal is credited as playing “Adam + Anthony” (get it? He’s the sum of two men!). Adam is a professor. In a class of few students, he writes “chaos” onto a blackboard and other important words spring from that organized source: “chaos.” Adam circles them and talks of history repeating itself.
This scene is shown more than once. Is it the repetition of his profession, or the repetition of “chaotic” but organized filmmaking?
Adam has a dim and dour apartment where he grades papers and has dour sex with Mary (Laurent). It seems that she usually wants him to stop at a certain point because she’s not into it anymore.
One time Mary is too drunk to fuck so Adam watches a movie that another teacher (Joshua Peace) recommended.
In a half-great meta-moment Adam responds to a co-worker’s question of, “Do you like movies?” with “Is there a reason you’re asking me?” On one hand his character is dismissing movies, on the other Villeneuve is acknowledging that this will function as a key device to introduce the plot. That Adam goes one step further and asks for a “cheerful” film recommendation is perhaps Villeneuve’s slap back at how he might view the personal film preferences of a non-film fan. The French-Canadian filmmaker is, after all, a serious filmmaker. After Enemy, Incendies and Prisoners I’d rather something cheerful, too.
The movie that Adam watches based on the co-worker’s “cheerful” recommendation introduces him to Anthony. Anthony is a glorified extra that Adam spots in the film. He plays “Bellhop #3” and he exactly resembles Adam. An Internet search confirms the uncanny resemblance. It also seems that Anthony St. Claire had no credited acting roles since 2006, with the role as said third bellhop (between Enemy and Grand Budapest Hotel, lobby boys are pretty hot right now; get your Halloween costumes ready!).
Adam tracks Anthony down. They meet in a hotel room. They have an identical scar on their stomach. Anthony, the actor, rides a motorcycle. He’s married to Helen (Sarah Gadon), who is pregnant. All careful surface tropes make it known that these men are opposites. Marriage and a child on the way implies a cheerfulness that Adam desires. Being free from marriage and children provides a recklessness that appeals to Anthony.
The film begins at an underground high-end masturbation club, where men watch different performers writhe on a stage in pleasure. It’s very exclusive. Was it Anthony or Adam that went to this club? Or was it Adam + Anthony? The final nude and nubile performer (Alexis Uiga) elegantly walked to the stage properly carrying a fancy server’s plate with a tarantula inside. As her clothes drop, she lets loose the tarantula and then threatens to squash it with her giant platform heels.
Sticky.
After all the overwrought strings of a musical score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans make every moment and gesture feel immense and after all the eye weariness of Gyllenhaal’s disbelief of his doppelganger existence it turns out that this is not a dalliance on the duality of man. No, these men are the same penny. This isn’t Adam and Steve, after all. The only thing that Adam + Anthony want to do when they’ve been proposed with an existential identity crisis is not, say, see how the other man lives, but to see who the other man fucks.
Prisoners had leaps in logic and an overly offensive portrayal of sex abuse victims as forever stutterers whose only function is to hold onto a clue to be discovered. Villeneuve and Prisoners’ ace cinematographer, Roger Deakins, made that film feel much more important and airtight than the script allowed the overall product to be. There were easy to spot clues on necklaces, drawings and a repeated slithering snake motif.
Here Villeneuve repeats with psychological clues. If there is one success with Enemy it is that its final shot does bring all of his psychological elements together. However if you follow that tarantula back in a flat circle it only provides a narrative excuse to an element that bothered me throughout the whole film: the silence of the women. First, because Laurent and Gadon are two very good actresses who are given absolutely nothing to do; while Gyllenhaal’s duality is given lengthy, but vacant reflection. Then Laurent and Gadon’s only purpose is to fulfill a blonde-cuckolding fantasy and then react if it feels wrong.
Enemy is a 90-minute film that thinks it’s shattering your brain. All its really doing is squashing women under the blocky pretense of one self-centered man.
At least in The 4th Man there was castration.
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
