15/10/2013 - Richard Ayoade’s second feature is a BFI London Film Festival favourite and a harbinger of a bright future for British cinema

British filmmaker Richard Ayoade displayed early promise and won a slew of awards for his 2010 feature debut Submarine [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. The Double [+see also:
trailer
film profile], his second feature, is altogether more ambitious and Ayoade has delivered on that early promise in spades. Based on an 1848 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Double is about an office drone Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) who has all the personality of a sheet of blank paper. Most of his co-workers, including the object of his affections Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), don’t even remember his name. Matters come to a head when his doppelganger James Simon joins the company. James is as socially adept as Simon is inept and he is a rapid social and corporate climber who thinks nothing of exploiting his lookalike in every manner possible, including worming his way into Hannah’s heart and bed. Simon must now find a way around his double and reclaim his own life.

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For audiences with a sense of cinema and literature history, The Double will feel derivative. Ayoade creates a dystopian, Kafkaesque world that is in equal parts nods to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. The meticulous production design creates a dark, often subterranean universe replete with cantankerous elevators, flickering lights, and television sets, photocopiers and prototype computers from the 50’s. However, beneath the surface quirks, Ayoade crafts a tale that is both a tender love story and a meditation on the nature of existence, which benefits from a healthy dose of sardonic humour. And the director has extracted Eisenberg’s career best performance to date in a demanding double role where his character differentiations are clear. After Stoker [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile], Wasikowska effortlessly delivers another damaged character. With Ayoade, the future of British cinema is in safe hands.

The British Film Institute, Film4, Alcove Entertainment and Attercorp Productions produced The Double, with StudioCanal handling UK distribution.