Denis Villeneuve bounces back with the tasty, dark Jake Gyllenhaal double-header, ENEMY

To those of you, including me, who found the recent Denis Villeneuve movie, Prisoners, obvious, tiresome and excrucia-tingly overlong, it is a pleasure to report that his newest film, ENEMY, again starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is everything Prisoners was not: concise and economical but also tantalizing and surprising. The film is full of barely buried dread and deals with themes of identity, paranoia, suspicion, that ever-present combination of sex and death, misogyny and maybe genophobia.

That's a lot to serve up on any plate but Mr. Villeneuve, shown at right, manages this with remarkable skill, discretion and subtlety  -- and all this from the man who also gave us Incendies and Maelstrom. It may be -- probably is -- that this filmmaker allows his subject matter and screenplay to dictate, at least somewhat, his style. Here--working from a screenplay by that excellent screen-writer Javier Gullón (El rey de la montaña and Hierro) based on a novel by Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago--Villeneuve directs as close to the vest as he's ever done.

The reticence and dark quiet he brings to the fore is unexpected and disturbing, and the performance he coaxes from Mr. Gyllenhaal is top-notch. Playing two roles -- Adam and Anthony -- and giving each one just the right posture and vocal veneer, this young actor continues to surprise us with his commitment and growth.

As the two women in Adam/Anthony's lives, both Mélanie Laurent (above) and Sarah Gadon (below) register strongly, even though part of their purpose here is to show us how similar is the taste in women that our two "heroes" possess. Isabella Rossellini makes also makes a single-scene appearance as someone's mother.

A quote shown us at the film's beginning notes that "Chaos is order as yet not apprehended," and the film bears this out strangely but dramatically, as Adam encounters his doppelganger, Anthony, and proceeds to both recoil from and explore this "other."

By the end of the film, you will realize that what you sometimes thought and who you imagined you were viewing was not on always on the mark. On one level, a very literal one, Enemy is a kind of horror movie. But symbol and metaphor are so ever-present that you really won't be able to take the film literally.

Enemy's ending, in fact, is about as abrupt and spectacular as any you'll have seen, with an image that brings us back to woman as destroyer -- Eve, as always -- and to identity and the impossibility of real change.

The movie, from A24 and running just 90 minutes, opens theatrically exclusively in New York City at the Angelika Film Center this Friday, March 14. The following week it will open across the country. Click here to view all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters included. (This movie has also been playing, since last month, exclusively on DIRECTV.)

HOLLOW TRIUMPH: Henreid/Bennett starrer from Fuchs/Sekely gets a spiffy, restored look

A film of which I'd never heard till now -- despite its good cast (Paul Henreid and Joan Bennett) and a screenwriter of several other excellent films (Daniel Fuchs) but a Hungarian director (István "Steve" Székely) whose main claim to fame would be The Day of the Triffids -- HOLLOW TRIUMPH, aka The Man Who Murdered Himself aka The Scar, looks today very much like a would-be hard-boiled noir that occasionally veers perilously close to unintentional camp.

The occasion for covering it comes from its release, via Film Chest, this coming Tuesday, March 11, in a new high-definition restoration from the original 35mm film elements. The restoration looks very good -- crisp black-and-white cinematog-raphy (by the great John Alton) with few moments in which that restoration loses luster.

This was one of only two films produced by its star, Mr. Henreid, shown above. The other -- For Men Only (which he also directed) -- about a college hazing death sounds much more worthwhile, as well as, of course, ever timely. The actor went on to direct a number of other films and television shows, as well as continuing to act until the late 1970s (he died in 1992). A somewhat wooden performer, he still managed to score well in several memorable movies, including Casablanca and Now, Voyager. With his rather thick Austrian accent, he came across as alternately classy or evil, as needed.

In Hollow Triumph, however, that accent seems odd at best, and the movie attempts no explanation for it. Henreid's character, John Muller, may have a Germanic sounding name, but he's only ever been a resident of the USA, so far as we know, and his brother (played by Eduard Franz, above, left) has no accent at all. If this were the movie's biggest problem, however, we'd be lucky.

It's clear from the outset that the movie wants to be a hard-boiled noir -- the opening is a scene in the warden's office of a prison, in which we're given reams of background exposition. The cinematography and camera angles are top-notch, but the story -- one of those "doppelganger" tales that have difficulty remaining credible at best and utterly defy credibility at worst -- keeps constantly veering between "Hmmm..." and "Oy!"

Fortunately Ms Bennett (above and below) is on hand to provide some beauty and sass. She becomes the heart of the film, and it is generally a pleasure to watch her work. She's particularly good at delivering some of the film's saucier dialog, which then allows her to slowly modulate into a kinder, gentler woman.

The film's twists and turns, often pretty unbelievable, do at least allow for some fun and irony, particularly as the finale approaches, in which Henreid's wooden delivery can more easily be mistaken for subtlety.

Among the little surprises is a funny, charming performance from the always dependable John Qualen (above, left) as the dentist who works in the same building as our doppelganger doctor. You may also notice a very young Jack Webb (of Dragnet fame), below, left, making his movie debut here. Webb has no dialog (that I caught, at least) but his several short scenes let us see him visually long enough to recognize that very noticeable (as they used to call it it) kisser.

You'll also get a gander at a truly gorgeous and glamorous blond actress named Leslie Brooks, shown below, who appeared in a number of movies during the 1940s (Hollow Triumph would be her penultimate--until a final film in 1971), without her ever quite making it to stardom.

Ms Brooks looks very good here, however, and provides yet another reason for checking out this little (and little-known) B movie.

The 1948 film, in its new restoration and running 82 minutes, hits the streets this coming Tuesday, March 11, on DVD only, with a suggested retail price of just $12. It will be available for pur-chase or rental via Amazon and I hope eventually on Netflix, where there's yet no word of this title.

A streaming must-see: Charles Sturridge's adaptation of duMaurier's THE SCAPEGOAT

British filmmaker Charles Sturridge (shown below in younger days) has had an interesting career, though not one to which most Americans will have given much thought. Best known, I should think, for the Brideshead Revisited TV mini-series from 1981, he has also made three movies very much worth seeing: A Handful of Dust (from 1988), Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997). His successes have been in the classic, what we might call Masterpiece Theater mode, yet his choice of projects (or perhaps what have landed in his lap) tend to be quirky and not as easy to pigeon-hole as some critics or audiences might like. A Handful of Dust, based on the Evelyn Waugh novel, was for its time almost like a deliberate smack in the face of folk who love "classy" Brit TV and film; Where Angels Fear to Tread, in which a lovely, sexual Helen Mirren comes (and goes) with shocking brevity, also rocked (a bit gently, based as it was on an E.M. Forster novel) family, tradition, class and the meaning of decency; while A Fairy Tale, in its strange and delightful way, combined the likes of Harry Houdini with Arthur Conan Doyle, Peter Pan, photography and, yes, fairies.

Now comes what may be one of Sturridge's best films -- THE SCAPEGOAT -- which he has adapted from one of the lesser-known novels of Daphne du Maurier, and from which another movie was adapted back in 1959, which starred Alec Guinness and Bette Davis. (TrustMovies saw that film when he was in his late teens but barely remembers it now. Next time it plays TCM, he'll have to grab it.) In the novel a Britisher visiting France runs into his doppelganger/
double, and soon finds himself impersonating this Frenchman and infiltrating the man's family and business. Sturridge has -- more interestingly and a little more believably, too -- set the scene in England, in the early 1950s at the time of the coronation of Elizabeth II.

The look-alikes here are played by Matthew Rhys (above), about whom differences of class and character are all. John Standing, at right, is a decent, if rather untested, school teacher, while Johnny Spence (at left) is a aristocratic cad, someone the Brits might call a "bounder." As the men meet almost at the film's beginning, we know but little about Standing (he has just been let go from his teaching job at a prestigious boy's school, below) but almost nothing about Spence.

What happens after this initial meeting, and from there onward in this fast-moving and often riveting combination thriller/family drama, is full of both the expected and the not-so. What is most surprising about this genuinely stirring movie is how it manages to subvert expectation to become a kind of lovely, moving thriller -- one that's charming and imaginative as it tosses us into someone else's world. Thrills, you see, can come in all kinds of packages, and Sturridge has once again chosen a work that offers him the opportunity to pull, but gently, the rug out from under the expectations of his audience.

The family into which Standing becomes a part is inhabited by some pretty caddish and unhappy sorts, including Johnny's mother, Lady Spence (Eileen Atkins, at right) who never seems to be able to rise from her bed...

...as well as a sister (the wonderful, as always, Jodhi May); a callow brother, played by Andrew Scott (at left, three photos below); a lovely, pliant wife (Alice Orr-Ewing), an ador-able, spirited daughter (Eloise Webb, at bottom, left), and a sexy conniving sister-in-law (Sheridan Smith, below, and lately of Hysteria) with whom Johnny has clearly been having an affair.

Around the periphery scurry other characters: the family's maid (a fine performane from Phoebe Nichols), its clergyman (Anton Lesser, below right), the take-charge chauffeur (Pip Torrens) and a young Frenchwoman (the great Sylvie Testud) who relocated to London during the war, it seems.

How John manages to take Johnny's place in the family members' minds and finally in their hearts provides the meat of the movie, and what a tasty, nourishing feast it does become. Ms du Maurier seldom wrote uninteresting plots, which is one reason so many of her evergreen works have been adapted into films -- Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel to Don't Look Now and The Birds, among many others.

This one proves so due to its doppelganger premise, which is always a good hook, even more so for what Sturridge does with it. His specific time period -- as Queen Elizabeth is about to be crowned and television is making its way into England -- proves just about perfect for the tale he tells. The movie begins with the arrival of this aristocratic family's first television and ends with the family watching the coronation on their new and oh-so-tiny set. Ms Nichols' final speech, about this event and how it applies to what's going on in the family, is a humdinger -- making beautifully clear the reason for the particular place, period, and doppelganger theme.

Midway to two-thirds' through the film, what must happen in these movies about "doubles" does occur. How the filmmaker handles this -- in an almost perfunctory fashion: it's the most typically thrilling but also least commanding part of the film -- indicates where his interest really lies: in character rather than event.

Who of all these characters figures out which man is which proves a large part of the exquisite fun here, while giving two of the performers in this crack ensemble cast the chance to really shine. The Scapegoat, first shown, I believe, on British television, is now available via Netflix streaming (you can add it to your NF queue, as well, then wait until the time, if and when, it becomes available here on DVD). This is such a wonderful, old-fashioned tale done so well that it qualifies as don't-miss entertainment.