The Double (2014)

(This review was originally written in March 2014. References to having a boyfriend and upcoming Blu-Ray releases are anachronistic.)

A few weeks ago, I watched Submarine with my boyfriend. (Another excellent, excellent movie.) Imagine my happiness when I found out another Richard Ayoade film was being released this month.

It's very much a play on Hitchcock; extended allusions to Strangers on a Train and Rear Window frame the film, with Jesse Eisenberg embodying Jimmy Stewart. But these noir elements really do create something different: it's much more abstract, with two different versions of Eisenberg, Simon James and James Simon (must be a lot of playground bullying right there) existing as the same thing and existing as separate, and no real time period: it's both the 1930s and 40s and the 1970s and 80s at the same time, with a few tinges of the present day. The office is ancient, the living room and TV incredibly 70s, a science fiction character who suspiciously looks like Robocop absolutely 80s, and the security system in place at the office the type of thing you would see after Al-Qaeda bombed the Twin Towers.

Heck, even one version of the poster gives it that same noir feel (which my local Picturehouse did a chalkboard rendition of.)

Courtesy of the Cinema City Norwich Facebook page

Surprisingly it's only Ayoade's second film, four years after Submarine, but it has the same level of art as that film. There is the idea of the Auteur theory, that suggests a director will make the same kind of films. But The Double is really a wholly different entity from Submarine. I suppose in a way there is a progression: we go from a man in his mid-teens to one in his mid-late-twenties, shifting from a British public school to an American office, but the whole concept is different. Anderson's 'Mick Travis' trilogy kind of did the same, seeing a male protagonist move in situation and in age, but Ayoade isn't following one character. Fundamentally, like Submarine, it's a 'boy meets girl' story, except in place of idyllism is a socially awkward protagonist who struggles to 'get the girl.' The concept is the kind you'd see in a romantic comedy: "James Struggles to Talk to Hannah...But What If There Was Two of Them?", except Ayoade delivers it in a much darker, noir style. Submarine also had dark elements, but I think Ayoade here is going for a darker tone, where everyone is more enclosed (or, especially, Simon/James.) The south African dad from that film is here too, still as awesome.

It's a lot of things in one, really. Simultaneously it's a noir thriller as it is a love story, as it is a film on one's desire to be noted rather than ignored, how one perceives their own existence and the lingering question of suicide.

If you do a Google of this film, you'll find an action film with Richard Gere and Topher Grace in (which, I suspect, is of rather lesser quality.) If you liked Submarine, this might not even be for you. If you liked Submarine for its 'coming of age' story, then this isn't really for you. But if you liked it for the awkward protagonist and its noir vision, then this is for you. (It's also for you if you a) have a crush on Jesse Eisenberg, or b) love the visuals Hitchcock popularised in his work.)

5.9 IMDB rating, y'know.

If it's praise enough I can give the film, I will be buying the Blu-Ray.