enemy 2013 movie review

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Enemy Movie Review: Jake Gyllenhaal Gives a Career-Defining Performance in Denis Villeneuve A24 Thriller

Review: Beyond the immediate impact, Enemy lingers in your mind, prompting introspection and challenging your perception of what the plot ultimately means. Denis Villeneuve directs one of the most beguiling movies of the 2010s.

jake gyllenhaal enemy 2013 movie denis villeneuve a24 film

Denis Villeneuve ‘s 2013 movie, Enemy , transcends the confines of what a conventional thriller can be, weaving through a tense world with existential dread and psychological turmoil. While the genre elements of mystery and suspense are undeniably present, they serve as mere brushstrokes in a larger image exploring the profound themes of identity, duality, and the subconscious.

Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a career-defining performance, embodying both Adam, the repressed college professor, and Anthony, his carefree doppelgänger and actor, with such nuanced dexterity that their distinct personalities bleed through every gesture and expression. The audience is drawn into a voyeuristic dance, deciphering the small differences in their demeanor, morals, and perspectives, constantly questioning the nature of their connection and the blurred lines between the two characters’ realities.

Villeneuve, mastering visual storytelling in Enemy , crafts an unsettling atmosphere that seeps into your bones. The film’s ochre-tinged palette, reminiscent of faded photographs, casts a pall over the sterile cityscape, mirroring the characters’ internal struggles. Deliberate pacing and a dissonant score by Saunder Jurriaans and Danny Bensi further amplify the sense of unease, creating a dreamlike state where reality and illusion constantly dance on the edge of perception.

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Enemy ‘s true power lies in its ambiguity. Unlike conventional narratives that spoon-feed answers, Denis Villeneuve invites the audience to actively participate in unraveling the movie’s enigmatic plotlines. The recurring spider motif becomes a potent symbol, open to individual interpretation. Is it a harbinger of danger, a manifestation of repressed desires, or simply a narrative thread to guide us through the inner turmoil of Adam? The beauty lies in the absence of definitive answers for Enemy , where Denis allows you to form your own conclusions.

Beyond the immediate impact, Enemy lingers in your mind, prompting introspection and challenging your perception of what the plot ultimately means. The film’s exploration of identity transcends the individual, delving into the collective anxieties and societal pressures that shape our understanding of ourselves. In a world increasingly obsessed with self-branding and social media personas, Enemy forces us to confront the unsettling possibility that the lines between who we are and who we project to the world might be more blurred than we imagine.

The movie stands among one of the best A24 movies to date, nearly everything released in 2013, and Denis Villeneuve’s own filmography. It really improves on rewatch, and I can’t wait to revisit again down the line.

Genre: Mystery , Thriller

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Enemy Film Cast and Credits

Jake Gyllenhaal as Adam Bell / Anthony Claire

Sarah Gadon as Helen Claire

Mélanie Laurent as Mary

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Writer: Javier Gullón

Cinematography: Nicolas Bolduc

Editor: Matthew Hannam

Composers: Saunder Jurriaans , Danny Bensi

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Enemy Reviews

Enemy is brimming with non-commercial bravado that borders on being confessional. Just as Hitchcock made manifest his voyeuristic and controlling proclivities, Villeneuve exposes his own conflicted feelings towards women and monogamy.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2023

It will haunt the shit out of you

Full Review | Jan 14, 2022

It's a thought-provoking film that plays on the mind for days afterwards.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 27, 2021

A stylish and sinister (with a big tasty dollop of mystery on the side) that will keep audiences guessing long after they've left the theatre.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Perhaps more important than the conundrum at the heart of the film is the skillfully crafted feeling of perplexity.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 4, 2020

Jake Gyllenhaal meets his doppelgänger - or maybe it's also him - and mostly they argue...

Full Review | Oct 10, 2020

It's a beautiful, nightmarishly warped universe ripe for multiple readings and psychological explanations concerning hidden desires and oppositions.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 29, 2019

Enemy is the type of film you just can't shake.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2019

Whilst the mysterious premise and sensory illusions make for a relatively mesmeric experience, Villeneuve struggles to repress the same heavy-handedness that's been present throughout his oeuvre.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 3, 2019

Enemy wants so much to be profound and provocative that it fails to ground itself in any way.

Full Review | Jan 16, 2019

This movie took a lot out of me last night.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Sep 10, 2018

I'm a huge fan of Villeneuve and Gyllenhall, but this is just not a good movie.

I liked Enemy a lot. I see so many movies each year, many of which are near-clones of previous movies, that it's a treat to see a movie with an unconventional take on things, even if it's disturbing.

Full Review | Aug 26, 2018

If "Enemy" is the weakest of the three Villeneuve films I've seen, the problem is its reliance on gratuitous weirdness to do its heavy lifting.

Full Review | Feb 17, 2018

While the film is finely crafted and boasts excellent performances from female leads Laurent and Sarah Gadon, everything is too restrained and tasteful and, in particular, too reliant on the suspense trope of the chase.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 8, 2017

It's all style - and what wonderful, skillful style it is - with little substance.

Full Review | Aug 15, 2017

Featuring a tremendous performance by Jake Gyllenhaal and bold direction from Denis Villeneuve, Enemy is a masterfully crafted film with a tricky but very fulfilling premise.

Full Review | Dec 7, 2016

Gyllenhaal embodies both men with care, building distinct characters that no amount of physical similarity can prevent discerning who is who.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Mar 9, 2016

For those who enjoy a different kind of cinema, this is not to be missed.

Full Review | Feb 29, 2016

As with many Gyllenhaal flicks, a huge amount goes unsaid - such as what is going on.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 22, 2015

Enemy (2013)

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Enemy review – a morbidly elegant doppelganger tale

Y ou can usually count on Jake Gyllenhaal for a magnetically odd performance: before Nightcrawler it was Prisoners , last year’s collaboration with Canadian director Denis Villeneuve . By comparison, in Villeneuve’s Enemy Gyllenhaal is altogether reasonable – compelling, though, and you get two Jakes for the price of one. Counterintuitively representing an island of understatement in an altogether barmy film, Gyllenhaal plays a timid academic who discovers that he has an exact double, a failed movie actor, and makes the mistake of contacting him.

Based – with considerable modifications, by all accounts – on José Saramago’s novel The Double , Enemy is set in an otherworldly version of Toronto and laced with menacing arachnid imagery. Cloaked in acrid yellow hues, it might have been dreamed up in committee by David Cronenberg, Luis Buñuel and the Polish master of freaky psychosexual gloom Andrzej Zulawski, whose surpassingly weird Possession (1981) this very much recalls. With its strong dosage of dream and male-centred eroticism (Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon, as the two men’s partners, barely register as characters), Villeneuve’s film is eerie, unsettling and ultimately opaque: a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a murky spiderweb. I’m not convinced, but Enemy has morbid elegance to spare, which should guarantee it some long-term cult prestige.

The Observer
Jake Gyllenhaal
Denis Villeneuve

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