Yes, the same could be said about some of the great ’60s art films: Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte and Eclipse, which the critic Pauline Kael called “the come-dressed-as-the-sick-soul-of-Europe parties.” But Resnais and Antonioni lent their wakes a artistic luxe and luster the movies were excitements for the eye if not for the spirit. (READ: Our review of Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness) Like Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness (2008), another adaptation of a Saramago novel - in which virtually everyone goes blind, not into the dark but into an opaque light - Enemy is an arid parable, in which actors are neutered, zombified they signify themes rather than occupying personalities. They wade into grand metaphors and sink before they can swim. It shares a fault of the Villeneuve-Gyllenhaal Prisoners: that movie lasted 2½ hours, this one just 90 mins., but both are nearly an hour too long.

It could be the blueprint of a really cool movie, or the memory of one. I hope I haven’t erred in making Enemy sound fascinating. When a woman in bright red enters a hotel lobby, it jars the eye like a visual air-raid siren. Interiors are a blend of sooty pastels, like the Jamba Juice colors of Spike Jonze’s her gone rancid, and the exteriors - the high-rises and empty streets - cast a gray, penitentiary pall over Toronto. The ends of his sentences sometimes echo, as if he’s in a huge warehouse for interrogation by some unknown Inquisition. The film’s aural and visual style conspire to underline Adam’s depression. (READ: Back when Jake Gyllenhaal was the Next Big Thing) Even his fellow teacher, the one who recommended he watch the Anthony movie, acts suspiciously blasé. The glances of strangers, as they are seen through Adam’s eyes, have an accusatory edge. The movie has a sleepwalker’s tempo, as if Adam’s story were his restless dream, but not a particularly illuminating one. The character lacks affect, and so does Enemy. He expels breath so deeply and so often that by the end of the movie he must be as deflated as a helium balloon a week after the birthday party. His reaction to nearly every stimulus or threat is to let out a long sigh. He’s leading not a double life but two half-lives he has a way but not the will. (It’ll be back.)Īdam’s adventures in the doppelgänger trade don’t perk him up. Then a fat tarantula crawls across the floor, to be crushed under a woman’s high heel. Early in the film, in some smoky hideaway, nude women dance for the pleasure of clothed men who look as if they’re the ones being watched. Enemy is full of clues pointing to further mysteries the search for order in this film’s universe remains tantalizingly unfulfilled. “Chaos is order yet undeciphered,” reads the opening epigram, which must mean: undeciphered even after the movie ends.

The double novel josé saramago