A24 Film No. 6: Enemy (2013)

After a series of coming-of-age films, Enemy marks a shift in A24’s trajectory, moving into the territory of the psychological thriller. Rather than depicting conventional growth or self-discovery, this film interrogates identity itself: what constitutes the self, how repetition shapes our experience, and how the tension between originality and duplication structures our lives. The premise (a man discovering his exact double) immediately provokes questions: what does it mean to encounter one’s doppelgänger, and what does such an encounter reveal about the self? Yet Villeneuve is less concerned with the literal shock of doubling than with the fractured, contradictory nature of human identity. The film suggests that the self is never unified, but perpetually divided, its desires, anxieties, and social roles in tension.

This is not an easy film to get through, and one could easily get lost (or, to be honest, even bored), but it definitely gains meaning after finishing it and reflecting on it. Much of its impact comes from paying attention to details and seemingly insignificant phrases that actually set the tone and reinforce the film’s overall point. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Enemy is based on José Saramago’s novel The Double. It tells the story of Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal), a history professor leading a monotonous, routinized life. His days are predictable: he wakes, teaches, and returns home to his girlfriend. The city around him mirrors this monotony, with repetitive architecture and a yellow-brown palette that renders nothing distinct. 

This sense of stasis is disrupted when a colleague recommends that Adam watch a film, Where There Is a Will There Is a Way. Within it, he spots an extra who is his uncanny double: Anthony Claire, an actor whose physical likeness mirrors Adam in every detail. The discovery sets Adam on a quest to find Anthony, leading to encounters that reveal shared voices, scars, and behaviors, yet leave deeper personality differences opaque. Villeneuve intentionally avoids providing a “truth” about who is original, destabilizing the viewer’s expectations and foregrounding the question of identity as a site of tension rather than resolution.

The double as a theme

As mentioned earlier, Adam is a history professor, and the classes we see focus on contemporary history, war, and dictatorships. In one session, he tells his students something that I believe is key to unpacking the film. He references Hegel’s idea that every event in history happens twice, and Marx’s later addition that the first time it occurs is a tragedy, while the second is a farce. Based on this idea, Adam and Anthony can be seen as representations of this duality, the repetition of something in the world. But who is the “original,” and who is the “farce copy”? In the novel, Saramago provides details about each character’s birth, clearly establishing who is the original. In Enemy, however, we never truly know. This opens the door to other interpretations, such as the possibility that they are different reflections of a single mind, or even the same person.

Adam functions as an unreliable narrator, leading us to believe he might be the “original” one. We follow his story, and there’s even the playful detail that both characters’ names begin with an A, yet Adam’s last name starts with a B, while Anthony’s begins with a C. Despite this, I argue that Anthony is the true “original.” He is the one with the seemingly stable life, a pregnant wife and a nice apartment, which may actually be making him unhappy, explaining his darker mood. Adam, on the other hand, represents a version of him who chose to explore other possibilities, including a relationship with another woman who bears a striking resemblance to his wife. Adam’s mood is lighter, and he appears more likable, but perhaps this is because he has not only physically strayed from his wife but also emotionally sought an alternate life. 

The contrast between the two sides of the Adam/Anthony unit is visually reinforced through lighting: Adam is consistently shown in the light, while Anthony remains in the shadows. In one scene, Adam tells his mother (played by the remarkable Isabella Rossellini) about his encounter with Anthony. She reminds him that he has a good life and a good job (presumably the teaching position) and advises him to let go of this fantasy of being a third-rate actor. While this could be read as her urging him to forget the strange encounter with his doppelgänger, it might also refer to the side career Adam/Anthony has been trying to pursue in acting. They are the same. 

That said, I do not believe the film’s central concern is determining who the “original” is, but rather exploring the very process of internal conflict itself. Maybe the are both the original in the sense that each carries elements from that “initial” version of Adam/Anthony (I’m just going to call the unity of them “A”).

Villeneuve seems less interested in a literal double and more invested in exploring the doubleness that exists within us. In an interview, the director stated: “What I liked about the book was this idea that I feel is very accurate: repetition is Hell. If you don’t deal with your shadows, you are condemned to repeat the same mistake over and over, as a human being or as a society.” From this perspective, Adam and Anthony appear to be the same person, following each other as a manifestation of paranoia—the idea that the other side of oneself is always present, reminding us of what we are and what we carry inside. Adam represents the “functional” side, while Anthony embodies darker desires. These desires are suggested through the underground nightclub seen in the opening sequence and later symbolized by the recurring image of the spider, which appears in their dreams and plays a crucial role in the final scene. For me, this confirms that the “dark desires” side never truly disappears, and that Adam cannot escape it.

We are our own enemy

In this sense, “A” is his own enemy, a point clearly reinforced by the film’s title. Their face-to-face encounter represents the moment in which he confronts himself and all aspects of his identity. He has been living a double life, one as Adam and one as Anthony. Jake Gyllenhaal has mentioned in interviews that, for him, the film is about a man who is married and about to have a baby while simultaneously having an affair, and who is struggling to understand who he really is.

Another element that connects the film and the novel is the quote that serves as the film’s prologue: “Chaos is order yet undeciphered.” The characters are attempting to figure out the pattern, to understand how to deal with their dark desires alongside their “adult,” socially acceptable lives, and how to learn from their mistakes. They are in the process of deciphering that chaos, but it seems that they never fully succeed by the end of the film.

Enemy ultimately proposes that identity is not a stable or unified condition, but a site of ongoing internal conflict. Through the figure of the double, the film suggests that unresolved desires do not disappear but instead return in cycles of repetition, turning the self into its own enemy. Rather than offering resolution or self-mastery, Enemy presents identity as something that must be continually confronted, even when such confrontation fails to produce change. It challenges the assumption that self-knowledge leads to liberation. Although Adam becomes increasingly aware of his divided identity, this awareness does not allow him to escape repetition or internal conflict. Instead, the film suggests that recognizing one’s contradictions is insufficient if they are not fully integrated, leaving the subject trapped in a cycle where understanding coexists with paralysis.

Finally, Enemy can be seen as part of an era of A24 that seeks to explore fractured psyches and moral ambiguity through our deepest, most unsettling sides: wounds, shadows, and brokenness. These are stories about fractured characters and how they navigate life, gradually moving toward the psychological horror that would become more prominent in later A24 films.