The Double

In Richard Ayoade’s unnerving noir-thriller, the deliciously drab setting of dank offices and dour apartment blocks is not identified as belonging to any place or time. Though the clanking trains and analogue technologies feel retro, the Orwellian interactions indicate a futuristic pre-dystopia. It’s the perfect fit for cinephile Ayoade’s second outing.

Based loosely on Dostoyevsky’s novella, Jesse Eisenberg plays James Simon, an insecure office worker, overlooked by all around him. When a swaggering, doppelganger appears in his office, looking exactly like James but living a far more successful life, he is pushed to the brink of madness.

The movie poses a fascinating question: if no-one recognises you as a person, are you still one? Ayoade’s highly stylised world gives a claustrophobic weight to these uncomfortable issues. Eisenberg is unsurprisingly brilliant as both a shy, insecure wreck and manipulative egomaniac. However, Ayoade’s direction is the star. Borrowing from Welles, Hitchcock and Terry Gilliam, his film at once unsettling, funny and alienating, The Double is a brilliantly realised exercise in psychological tension.