TF:
Based on a Dostoyevsky novella about fractured identity. Set in a retro-futurist noirscape on an exceedingly slim budget, nodding to Kafka, Orwell and Poe. Plus Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. And Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Writer/director Richard Ayoade’s follow-up to the glorious Submarine could hardly be a more ambitious undertaking.
Jesse Eisenberg plays put-upon data-processing clerk Simon, who moons over his neighbour/colleague Hannah (Mia Wasikowska) from his miserable room/office. After a man commits suicide in Hannah’s building, Simon takes the opportunity to get to know her better… just as his arrogant doppelganger James (also Eisenberg) appears and starts Twilight Zoning his life, stealing all the glory at work and sweeping Hannah off her feet.
As the synopsis suggests, The Double is less about plot than mood, which cycles from arctic loneliness to spiteful slapstick via stoned existentialism and back again (we told you it was ambitious). If it’s not the film Submarine’s profundity-starved teenage protagonist would actually make, it’s certainly one he’d love: funny, strange and beautifully put together.
With the new The Crow remake coming soon, we take a look back at the 30-year-old cult classic original–and where the stars are now.
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