Sexy Spiders & The Many Legs of Enemy
Denis Villeneuve’s films are challenging. They rarely follow a single narrative, often introduce multiple themes, and leave a lot of the experience in the hands of the viewer. Critics find no consensus as to the quality of his pictures, and yet Villeneuve continues to grow, winning over global audiences by opening multiple experiences within a single film.
Enemy, his most criticized (and lowest grossing) work, is a body-double psychological thriller shot before, but released after, 2013’s Prisoners, both starring Jake Gyllenhaal. While Prisoners would announce him to US audiences, Enemy encapsulates an ambitious filmmaker experienced enough to be fully in control of craft but hungry enough to take enormous risks. This is Villeneuve’s transition film, taking him from an indie darling to one of the loudest voices in modern mainstream cinema.
A core criticism of Enemy, which is common across Villeneuve’s filmography, is the lack of clarity in the film. Are Gyllenhaal’s Adam Bell and Anthony Claire one or two different people? Is this all really happening? And what’s with all the naked women and spiders? But Villeneuve’s greatest strength is his subjective style, particularly with this film. The movie takes a handful of characters and deftly fastens them together with story structure and overlapping symbols to craft a single work containing numerous films, depending on who is watching and how they wish to experience it.
An essential feature of Enemy’s prismatic nature lies in the symbolic element of The Spiders, added by the director to his loose adaptation of Jose Saramango’s novel. Villeneuve, in a 2014 interview with The Exberliner, explained that he added the spider as a visual totem in which to pour a number of ideas relating to sexuality, femininity and the male subconscious. The image and the symbol of the spider throughout the picture provides an air of mystery, leaving the viewer questioning everything they see and hear. However, it also supplies the fulcrum for the movie to lift and lower, yielding all the different films inside.
Within Enemy, there is something on offer for almost everyone: a meditation on fragile masculinity and chaotic conflict resolution with the shadow-self; a time-is-a-flat-circle film where history repeats itself through a slow march into fascism, the masses lulled into submission by bread and circuses. Following other expansive storylines, the viewer can explore sexuality and motherhood through juxtaposition of the patriarchal representations of the madonna and whore. The film is so well crafted, in fact, that if you look for it, there’s a Spider-People Alien Invasion movie happening in the background!
The spiders appear, explicitly, four times throughout the film. Where they appear in the story telegraphs their importance. These are tent pole moments in the overall structure, upon which the rest of the story hangs.
In the opening sex club scene, a silhouetted nude woman in leather heels hunts a tarantula across the stage. The first spider sighting is jarring, even alluring, Anthony in black watching through fingers over his eyes. We’re then immediately distracted by Adam in a brown tweed suit, trudging through his Groundhog Day of teaching Hegel, Marx and totalitarianism encroaching while we’re being entertained. Additionally, this early sequence juxtaposes the sound of Mother’s voice with the image of faceless female bodies.
At the midpoint, the spider hunter returns, sauntering down the hall outside the club. We see her tarantula face clearly, the visual and idea now consuming both Anthony and Adam. Helen is aware of both men, her reaction of concern and worry dismissed by Anthony just before the excitement of another faceless body floating by Adam.
A massive Bourgeois Maman Spider marches through Toronto at the two-thirds mark, an “All is Lost” moment referred to across multiple story structure disciplines. Adam is with Mother right before the dominating spider appears. She is overbearing, insisting that there is no Anthony and it’s all in his head. But she’s not very concerned when referring to Anthony’s infidelities.
I was shook for days the first time I saw the final shot, revealing Helen as a Giant Spider, birthing more giant spiders. Even with seeing the arachnids throughout the film, the frame is jarring, and the culmination of the other themes pouring into a single moment. Anthony and Mary died in a car wreck the night before, but Adam and Helen have already moved on. With sex and temptation out of the equation, Adam dresses as Anthony, content with assuming the role of husband and father with Helen. He finds the key to the sex club and, embracing the role of Anthony even more, immediately tells Helen that he’s going, circling us back to the beginning. But, when he enters the room for Helen’s response, we know it’s all over.
Spider symbolism invades the film as it progresses. The city moves increasingly into frame, grids of skyscrapers and their windows creating spider eyes watching the protagonist, all while power lines and streets spin across the screen. We hear a voicemail from Adam’s mother at the beginning of the film. She’s worried about how he’s living in a crappy apartment. Right before the large spider at the sixty minutes, Mother asks Adam about his infidelity and acting career (issues that are only relevant to Anthony), a signal that the invasion has progressed. They got Adam’s mom! When Anthony and Mary crash, the camera pulls in fast on the broken window, a growing spider web. The spider figure fills the frame more each time it’s shown, first as a life-sized tarantula to Helen’s room-filling finale.
Enemy is an interesting film made during a transitional period of one of Hollywood’s premier directors, one that garnered award nominations outside the US. This would not be the end of Villeneuve as a risk taker, but the piece is his most daring, adapting a Portuguese Nobel laureate’s novel and running it through a multi-layered story prism. The film divided viewers and critics alike, which is odd, considering the movie contains something for everyone – even if you’re looking for an alien spider invasion flick.