The Double poses problems for film distributors and exhibitors. It is a difficult film to categorise. Is it ‘quirky mainstream’ or ‘studenty’ or ‘specialised’? Ayoade himself has a reputation for alternative comedy and he has assembled a starry cast. If the appropriate audiences can be defined, how should the film be programmed and promoted by cinemas and other outlets? Students will be asked to offer their ideas about these and similar questions after the screening.
Led by Roy Stafford, Freelance Film Lecturer
Screening: The Double (15)
Dir Richard Ayoade / UK 2013 / 93 mins/ Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Sally Hawkins
Loosely based on an 1846 novella by Dostoyevsky, Richard Ayoade’s film is set in a fictional world without specific locations in time or geographical space. It is a noirish world of routine office work and traditional entertainments in which Jesse Eisenberg plays the twin roles of Simon James and his double James Simon. The arrival of James – everything that Simon is not – is deeply disturbing and disruptive for Simon. Is this art, comedy or thriller?