We talk to director Denis Villeneuve about Enemy, his insane new movie

Denis Villeneuve has had quite the year. The Quebec director’s film Prisoners, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman, was a worldwide hit, earning $61 million in North America alone, and securing an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography.

Enemy, his first English-language feature, is actually his first film with Gyllenhaal, which after premiering at TIFF back in September is now receiving a wide release. Unlike the tense but relatively straightforward Prisoners, Enemy is a bewildering rabbit-hole of a movie, with Gyllenhaal playing a pair of doppelgangers caught in an increasingly dangerous game of shifting identities.

Despite it’s mysterious narrative, the film is a critical hit, and swept the Canadian Screen Awards this week, picking up awards for best director for Villeneuve, Best Supporting Actress for Sarah Gadon, as well as Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Score. Our review of the film can be found here.

We caught up with Denis for a few quick questions at the Montreal premiere of Enemy earlier this week.

You’ve said that improvisation played a large part in influencing the characters and the story for the film, is that something you came to early on in the process?

No, not building the story, the story was very, very planned in advance; it was a very precise screenplay. But the characters…making a movie about the subconscious I thought it would be quite interesting to inspire…as a vampire, to inspire myself from the actors themselves. And to bring the characters, instead of the actors going to the character, it was the characters going to the actors, you know? And so, sometimes as a joke, I was saying that “Enemy is a documentary about Jake Gyllenhaal’s subconscious.” And it’s not far for the truth actually. And it’s the same for Mélanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon, who brought a lot of their own personalities to their characters. It was a way of working that I was just trying to find (pauses)…a kind of freshness, a kind of beauty and a kind of poetry in the way they were play-acting, and I wanted to inspire myself as much as possible.

What did you learn about the characters in the process, did it change your opinion about any of them from how they were initially sketched out?

No, the thing is that we did a great casting, and they were just going the direction that was suitable for the story, I must say. Otherwise I will have to change my plans. But no, it just went according to the plan.

You added the spider symbolism to the film, what does that symbolism mean to you?

There are a lot of images in the film that were all planned in the screenplay.  And I came with those images because I was trying to express ideas that were in the book, but in a book a writer can express an idea with 40 pages sometimes.  José Saramago (author of The Double, which Enemy is based on) can dig into something for page after page, and I’d say, “how can I express that strong idea in one image?” And then I came with the idea of the spider. It’s an image that is perfect for me, it’s an image that I don’t want to explain because I like the audience…I love the fact that the audience has this challenge to digest it and understand it the way they want. I mean, I have my own specific meaning, I think that all the clues and the keys are in the film in order to understand. It’s not complicated, I fact. When you think about it, its very basic, it’s just that it’s more playful to do it this way.

Is there a definite finality to the film, or would you say the ending is more open-ended?

There is a finality, and it’s a very dramatic one.  It’s the saying that “repetition is hell.” It’s that the character can’t escape his own shadows.  That for me is the worst ending I can ever imagine, because as a man, I love to think that I can evolve!

What do you hope audiences take away from Enemy, is there anything specific you have in mind, or is it a certain type of experience you want them to have?

I want them to be challenged, I want them to be excited by this enigma, I don’t want them to be frustrated (laughs). I hope they will have fun.

Enemy opens theatrically on March 14.