Enemy

Enemy (2014) is Villeneuve's strangest film and explains nothing across ninety one minutes. Adam is a history lecturer, tired and living inside a repetition. He sees an actor in a film who looks exactly like him. He finds the man. Same voice, same scar, same everything. Once the two of them meet, things deteriorate quickly. It is adapted from José Saramago's novel The Double, though the film is far more abstract than the book. There are spiders everywhere in it. An enormous one over the city, one on a ceiling, one on a woman's head. Villeneuve has refused to say what they mean, and it is known he did not fully explain them to his actors either. The final shot is one of the most discussed closings in cinema. Audible reactions from audiences were recorded at screenings. We are not describing it here. The yellow haze the whole film sits in was produced in the grade; Toronto is unrecognisable. Jake Gyllenhaal plays both parts and the only way to tell them apart is posture. Villeneuve made this at almost the same time as Prisoners, with the same actor. It runs 91 minutes. Good for: psychological thrillers, films to interpret, and Villeneuve. Less good for: nothing is explained and that angers a lot of viewers. Anyone with arachnophobia should not open it.