“It was the idea of somebody so invisible & lowly that their double could appear and no one would notice; that was funny,” director Richard Ayoade said during a recent Q&A about this forthcoming “The Double.” And indeed, the film’s pleasures come from indulging in the absurdness of the scenario of a doppelganger emerging, consuming the life of his opposite, and no one being any the wiser except for the double.
Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska lead the excellent ensemble for this one (that includes Noah Taylor, Wallace Shawn, Yasmin Page, Cathy Moriarty and more), with their complicated relationship at the center of the movie. You see, Simon James likes Hannah, she barely knows he’s alive, but she utterly falls for his duplicate, James Simon, a much more charismatic and successful individual. And so you have scenes like the one in this clip, where Simon is utterly baffled that Hannah is intrigued by a man who looks exactly like him, but is nothing like him too.
“The Double” opens on May 9th. Check out the clip below along with a few new pics.
Great scene between Eisenberg and Wasikowska. I felt sorry for his character, but also for her – they both seemed frustrated and lonely.