In some stories about doubles, the arrival of the doppelgänger sends the protagonist into a crisis. Not so in this movie, where our hero is already decidedly cracked. Meet Simon James, played by Jesse Eisenberg, a worker drone in a dull dystopian society. Given how poorly he’s treated at work and how much he’s ignored by his dream girl Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), you might think things could not get much drearier for Simon. Well, meet James Simon, played by Jesse Eisenberg, a rakish, charming new employee—Simon’s exact physical likeness, yet an instant hit with his co-workers, boss (Wallace Shawn), and of course Hannah. Despite an initial flirtation between the two men—the look-alikes share a night on the town, and Simon uncharacteristically has a gas—the new guy cuts an increasingly sinister figure in our hero’s desperate existence.
The Double is directed by Richard Ayoade, the British actor/writer who co-starred in The Watch last year. Ayoade’s 2010 coming-of-age film Submarine showed him to be a filmmaker with clever instincts still in search of a style of his own. (Wes Anderson was undoubtedly checking his pockets after that one.)