Director: Richard Ayoade
Writers: Fyodor Dostoevsky (novel), Richard Ayoade, Avi Korine
Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn
There’s a thin line between the quirky and the deeply irritating. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, for instance, was certainly quirky, but it was about as enjoyable as being stuck in a lift with a bunch of partying hipsters. And it’s a very personal thin line: Napoleon Dynamite is a favourite for many, I couldn’t stand it. But sometimes it works. The Grand Budapest Hotel is quirky and it’s a very good film. And Richard Ayoade’s 2013 film The Double works too.
Set in the future / an alternative present, Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) is a timid clerk who is under-appreciated by his bosses and berated by his mother. He finds some succor in spying on Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), a girl who lives in the apartment block opposite and works in the same office as him. But then a new employee turns up at work, James, who happens to be Simon’s exact double and who is far more outgoing, successful and popular (not to mention dishonest and callous) than him. Naturally enough, Hannah falls for the new arrival, sending Simon into a downward spiral.
I was ambiguous about Ayoade’s debut film Submarine and consider The Double to be a considerable improvement. Despite being based on a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, it actually takes its cues from Brazil – both thematically and visually – and makes great play of the bureaucratic dystopia in which Simon finds himself, a crazy mixture of the modern and the antique where everything seems designed largely in order not to work. It’s immaculately shot and has a striking look, full of strange angles and contrasting lighting, not to mention neat cameos from Chris Morris and Paddy Considine.
