THE DOUBLE - LFF 2013 - Day Four

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Richard Ayoade is a British comedian who has adopted a persona of being a somewhat geeky tongue-tied boy-child and the fact that he carries that over to his stage persona as a director, introducing his sophomore directorial effort is something that I find utterly bizarre as somewhat irritating. It's as though he feels pressured to play up for the crowd, which in fairness lapped up his comedy introduction.  But as some point, is he not going to be hamstrung by his fluttery, flapping persona?  Is it not going to undermine the seriousness with which we approach his work.

I guess if anything positive is to come from what I found to be an ingratiating introduction, it's that Richard Ayoade understands what it is to have a split persona, if not a split personality as the protagonist in his new movie does.  The movie is based on a technically complex Dostoyevsky novella (which is itself a pastiche of Gogol) that depicts the schizophrenic breakdown of a government bureaucrat when his imagined doppelgänger steals his prestige at work and the admiration of his social circle.  Ayoade transfers this story to a highly stylised dystopian steampunk world in which James Simon, or is it Simon James works for a disturbing fascistic sounding "Colonel" in some kind of inane bureaucratic work in a world of cord-phones, 8-bit computer games and Pastiche Soviet austerity.

Jesse Eisenberg (THE SOCIAL NETWORK) carries the movie as both the repressed, shy, bullied protagonist and his suave, ingratiating double.  But he is ably supported by Mia Wasikowska as his manic pixie dreamgirl, Wallace Shawn as the blasé boss, and most brilliantly, Paddy Considine as a spoof TV superhero to which the repressed protagonist aspires.  I loved the grungy, brown-green-sallow production and art design of David Crank (LINCOLN) and Dennis Schnegg (TRANCE) and the expressionist lighting from cinematographer Erik Wilson (NOW IS GOOD) is inspired.  The sound design from Adam Armitage - so often expressing the protagonist's schizophrenia is also a major part of the mood and success of the film.

But for all that I couldn't shake off the feeling that I'd seen the movie before - or at least that this movie was channelling, in a weaker diluted form, greater achievements.  It reminded me of Gilliam's BRAZIL and, in its production design, Jeunet's DELICATESSEN and in its final infliction of mutual injuries, FIGHT CLUB of all things.  Which brings me to my final problem with the work - the murkiness surrounding what is actually going on with Simon/James.  Is he really schizophrenic, in which case why do people around him respond to both characters simultaneously?  There isn't the scrupulous observation of formal separation that we see in FIGHT CLUB. For those two key reasons, for all its formal accomplishments and marvellous acting, I wasn't massively impressed with THE DOUBLE as a directorial effort. 

THE DOUBLE has a running time of 93 minutes.

THE DOUBLE played Toronto and London 2013. 

SUBMARINE - as unsatisfying as onanism

This review is brought to you by The Ginger Dwarf, a man cursed not only with being short and ginger, but also with going to school in Wales.... 

I have never read “A Catcher in the Rye”. Perhaps this is why I felt deeply unsatisfied by “Submarine”, which, like onanism and caffeine, felt momentarily fantastic, but was ultimately disappointing. Its quirky humour, often delivered with deadpan voiceover, was at times inspired and very funny, but wasn’t sufficient to carry a movie which was too long and whose plot fell into facile traps towards the end. 

Richard Ayoade’s debut film (he wrote the screenplay and directed it, and most impressively, managed to live in Barry throughout the filming process, as anyone who has ever lived in South Wales will immediately understand), follows the travails of precocious pseudo-intellectual teen Oliver Tate. 

Oliver, best described as Wales’ answer to Adrian Mole, wears a duffle-coat and carries a briefcase around school. He obsesses about the nonchalant, twisted and red-coated Jordana Bevan, whose eczema and apparent bow-legs appear to be offset in his eyes by high-cheekbones and a flirtatious smile. That he is bound at some point to lose his virginity to her is a sine qua non, since this is a coming-of-age movie. And when the moment comes, pun intended, it is well executed and almost Andy Stitzer-like. Our solipsistic hero, encouraged by this victory and undamaged by life experience decides to try to save his parents’ marriage. Unfortunately for the viewers we simply don’t care enough about this awkward couple to care; they are just not likeable enough. They’re the sort of people who encourage their children to call them by their first names. We hardly envy their bourgeois hell. The juxtaposition of the parents’ decaying marriage and Tate’s burgeoning relationship with Jordana feels laboured. 

The only saving grace of this development is that it allows Paddy Considine’s character to run wild for a while. Much more of the dynamic between the mulleted Graham Purvis and Oliver could have been made, not least since, in their own ways, they believe equally in their own grandiose self-images. Prosaic characterisation is the film’s biggest let-down. Although he is bullied, it is refreshing that Oliver is not a total wimp, eschewing wholesale playground capitulation, but still he’s still whimsy and annoyingly affected. Jordana could have been more than the tough lass with a (barely) hidden soft side. Indeed, if this was a grown-up movie she’d have been a hooker-with-a-heart. Personally, I’d have preferred her to remain a hard-nosed and Juno-esque, or even better, like Sheeni Saunders’ “Portia Doubleday” in that other, excellent but neglected Michael Cera vehicle “Youth in Revolt”. Also noticeably implausible is the mother’s character. Albeit brilliantly played by Sally Hawkins, she comes across as far too sensible to fall for Purvis’ phoney wizard cum wedding DJ. Ayoade’s film has been frequently compared to Rushmore, indeed Wes Andersen regular Ben Stiller appears fleetingly as a TV soap star in Submarine. And yet the characters are self-involved and unpleasant, without the redeeming qualities which make Andersen’s films so textured. Despite the buzz, Submarine is underwhelming. Ayoade’s irreverent humour (he lists his influences for this film as Taxi Driver & Badlands – is he, even here, taking the piss?) is hit-and-miss and fails to convince in a movie which should have ended differently, and earlier. 

SUBMARINE played Toronto and London 2010 and Sundance 2011. It opens in the UK this weekend; in Norway on April 15th; in the US on June 3rd; in Poland in August and in Sweden on September 23rd.