Stuck on a miserable train, en route to a job that fills you with dread? Charisma vacuum Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) certainly is, but his work day will make yours seem a whole lot brighter. Because Simon has a doppelgänger called James Simon, showing why you can never trust a man with two first names. James Simon is Simon James’s physical identical, only with a decent personality and more positivity. When he turns up, James looks to be stealing the life from underneath ‘invisible’ Simon’s feet: job, confidence and even the girl he’s in love with (Mia Wasikowska).
Based loosely on a Fyodor Dostoevsky novella, Richard Ayoade told us his noir thriller follow-up to coming-of-age tale Submarine is “funny, if you find things like Rosemary’s Baby funny.”
The office antics are darker than his IT Crowd antics, he continues. “It has a paranoid humour.” And, while you might not be sold on 93 minutes of paranoia, cameos from the likes of Chris O’Dowd and Paddy Considine should do it.
The director, humble as always, wasn’t quick to give it the thumbs up, saying, “I’m not in a position to recommend anything I’ve done. I have an ulterior motive that should not be trusted any more than the head of Carpet World can be trusted to say how great this new carpet is. But I like it. We did our best.”
The Double will be screened at the London Film Festival this month, and is at cinemas next spring
