Bored family man Corey seeks out his midlife crisis self, who’s living the high life in Vegas and taunting his doppelganger via his YouTube channel.
Tag Archives: Doppelganger
CAPSULE: LINOLEUM (2022)
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Linoleum is currently available for VOD rental.
DIRECTED BY: Colin West
FEATURING: Jim Gaffigan, Katelyn Nacon, Gabriel Rush, Rhea Seehorn, Roger Hendricks Simon
PLOT: When a rocket crashes in his backyard, failed children’s TV-show host Cameron decides to rebuild it; meanwhile, a lot of strange, inexplicable things are happening in his suburban town.
COMMENTS: Linoleum has a lot going on in it, and for a while you may get the sense that it has bitten off more than it will be able to chew. The core story follows Cameron, who once wanted to be an astronaut but has settled for a career as an astronomer-cum-children’s show host, and whose long-running Bill Nye-esque science program has just been shifted to the midnight time slot. It also spends a lot of time following his daughter Nora, who’s a fashionably lesbian outcast until the new boy in town makes her question her sexual identity. There’s also Cameron’s wife Erin, who’s debating her own career choices and her choice of mate, and Cameron’s father, who’s in memory care with dementia. And there’s the new arrival in town, Cameron’s doppelgänger, who crashes onto the scene in a red convertible in miraculous fashion. A lot of weird, reality-defying events happen in this suburban town in an unspecified VHS-era time period, much of it precipitated by the rocket capsule that crashes in Cameron’s back yard. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out Linoleum‘s numerous, deliberate Donnie Darko nods, from the FAA-baffling aeronautic MacGuffin to the mysterious old woman hanging around on the periphery to a climax occurring at a Halloween party. So, yeah, there’s a lot going on; to the script’s credit, it’s all eventually explained by the (guessable, but not obvious) ending twist.
Colin West’s third feature film sports capable direction, helped along by a solid cast of indie movie vets. But most of the film’s publicity and buzz rightly centers around stand-up Gaffigan’s unexpected thesping. Although he doesn’t quite sink his wholesome reputation—Cameron is likable, if a bit of a wimp—he does stretch in his secondary role as Kent Armstrong, who brings a different and darker energy. Kent is cocky, and he treats his son with a military dad’s disciplinary philosophy. He’s both a better (younger, more competent) and a worse (less empathetic) version of Cameron. Gaffigan differentiates the two parts nicely, making a strong case he should be considered for more dramatic roles.
There’s a lot to praise in Linoleum, and yet, for me, it doesn’t entirely launch—and I’m not really sure why. The plot mechanics work; the twist satisfyingly ties things together (presuming you prefer things tied up in tidy packages). But the scattered critical reception it received, ranging from raves to confusion, suggest it failed to land universally. Cameron looks at the tangled mess of wires and unknown components he’s gathered from the capsule wreckage and wonders how he’s going to assemble them into a functional rocket. An early trial of the boosters starts with nothing, followed by a gradual growing power-up, followed by disappointment. So even though the assemblage works, it doesn’t work exactly as intended. This is not quite the proper metaphor for my experience of watching Linoleum, but it comes close. On the plus side, Linoleum has a gentle, Gaffiganesque charm and a resolution that tugs on susceptible heartstrings. So although it falls short of a general recommendation, if you are looking for the unusual combination of a puzzle movie with a tearjerking element, I’ll understand if you value this film highly.
No idea why it’s called Linoleum.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![A Quiet Place in the Country [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51Ih8xrfMzL._SL500_.jpg)
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: INFINITY POOL (2023)
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Infinity Pool is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.
DIRECTED BY: Brandon Cronenberg
FEATURING: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Jalil Lespert, Cleopatra Coleman, Thomas Kretschmann
PLOT: A foreign couple on vacation accidentally run down a local while driving drunk and learn of that country’s strange legal arrangement: in death penalty cases, for a generous monetary donation, they can substitute a clone for execution.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Cronenberg fils continues his plunge into the deep end of human darkness with Infinity Pool, a feverish nightmare of sin and excess spiked with hallucinogens.
COMMENTS: Infinity Pool takes place in an uncertain locale—an island paradise that might be in some Adriatic outpost of Eastern Europe (where it was actually filmed), or the Muslim world, or Oceania. Detective Thresh, tourists’ point of contact with the otherwise unseen government, has a vaguely Nazi-ish aura about him. Street signs and license plates are written in an alien language unknown on this planet. The time is also uncertain: for all intents and purposes the story is set in the modern day, except that this unknown backwater inexplicably possesses cloning technology, including complete personality and memory duplicating, that must be centuries away from realization. In short, Infinity Pool contains within it exactly what it needs to enact its parable, nothing more or less. The insular reality of the setting is as isolated as an all-inclusive resort protected from contact with the populace by huge fences and armed guards, where only a filtered simulacrum of authentic culture exists.
Cinematographer Karim Hussain, who has shot every B. Cronenberg film so far, uses disorienting techniques—vertical 360 pans, extreme closeups of lips and eyelashes, a strange shot where Thomas Kretschmann‘s silhouette turns into a pinheaded alien—to remind us that we’re in an exotic land defying norms and expectations. These stylistic excesses are capped by two epilepsy-warning, Kenneth Anger-styled psychedelic montages—one deployed to the depict the psychological effect of the doubling process, one the result of an orgy sparked by an indigenous hallucinogen—featuring swirling lights, disco balls, nude women, and, most disturbingly, a nipple oozing… something. These heavy techniques magnify Infinity Pool‘s weighty mood of moral doom.
Skarsgård is good as James, a writer who reveals less and less character as the film progresses. His decline is inevitable and believable: who among us would have the courage to defy the devil’s bargain Thresh offers to escape permanent oblivion? Still, Mia Goth dominates the film, cementing her position as horror’s nonpareil femme fatale of the moment. The ginger domme grows larger as Skarsgård shrinks. She has a wine-guzzling blast as a depraved seductress peeling away masks to reveal what seem to be infinite layers of evil.
The events of Infinity Pool work as pure moral horror, but also operate on a two-tiered satirical layer. As a social critique, the film illustrates first-world exploitation of poorer countries, while on an individual level it plumbs the perverse depths of self-destructive behavior. The rich selfishly appropriate local culture by stealing grotesque ceremonial masks for a disguise to perpetrate additional crimes. Meanwhile, sinking into hideous hedonistic excess, James finds himself engaging in shockingly literal self-abuse. The rich treat the poor as expendable, and James objectifies himself to escape responsibility for his own crimes. The premise naturally invites speculation about the nature of identity: an exact clone of myself with all my memories isn’t exactly me, but what is it? A mystery and a horror.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
9*. GEMINI (1999)
Sôseiji
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DIRECTED BY: Shinya Tsukamoto
FEATURING: Masahiro Motoki, Ryô
PLOT: Yukio is a successful doctor, decorated for his service in the war. His wife Rin is an amnesiac. Yukio discovers he has an identical twin from whom he was separated at birth—a resentful and savage twin, bent on revenge.
BACKGROUND:
- Tsukamoto adapted the story from a 1924 short story by Edogawa Rampo (“the Japanese Edgar Allan Poe”).
- In an unusual move, fellow director Takashi Miike assembled a 15-minute “making of” featurette to accompany the film on DVD.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Our first glimpse of the twin in the shadows. He looks just like Yukio, but wears ragged robes and a bizarre fur earmuff that covers half of his face. He shakes like he’s having a fit, then approaches the camera by doing cartwheels. It’s scary enough to give someone a heart attack.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Eyebrowless clan; somersaulting doppelganger
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Pulling back from the unbridled mania of Tetsuo: The Iron Man and similar body-horror experiments, Shinya Tsukamoto proves that he can generate cold sweats with a more subtle, purely psychological approach. With its deep shadows and determined pace, Gemini generates an uncanny horror that seeps into your bones.
The opening minutes of “The Making of Gemini“
COMMENTS: Gemini begins with an abstract, ominous prologue. It Continue reading 9*. GEMINI (1999)
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: COINCOIN AND THE EXTRA-HUMANS (2018)
Coincoin et les z’inhumains
DIRECTED BY: Bruno Dumont
FEATURING: Alane Delhaye, Bernard Pruvost, Philippe Jore, Alexia Depret
PLOT: Four years after the events of Li’l Quinquin, Quinquin (now Coincoin) has grown up and joined a far-right political group, while Commandant Van der Weyden investigates a mysterious black tar that is falling from the sky and a plague of doubles showing up in town.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: If Li’l Quinquin was worthy of consideration, then his equally odd brother Coincoin must be, too. Too bad we can’t mash Quinquin and Coincoin together into a single seven-plus-hour festival of Gallic strangeness.
COMMENTS: A lot has changed in the Côte D’Opale since we last visited Quinquin; and yet, nothing has really changed. Sure, Quinquin is now a strapping teenager who goes by “Coincoin” (like so much else in this world, the change in nomenclature is left a mystery). His old love interest, Eve, is now into girls. The outsiders are now undocumented Africans living in shantytowns on the outskirts of Calais instead of suburban Muslims. And no one worries about dead bodies found inside cows anymore; they’re more concerned with the black goo that’s falling from the heavens, usually splattering the cops at inconvenient times. But though the case may have changed, the tic-ridden Commandant Van Der Weyden and his foul-toothed assistant Carpentier are still on it. Their cruiser still tilts up on two wheels (in fact, it does so much more often). The townsfolk are still quaintly thoughtless and provincial. And there still is no resolution or logical explanation as to why this quiet French outpost is the locus of so much metaphysical weirdness. Most importantly, the project feels exactly the same: eccentric, tone-shifting, with little surreal jaunts off the beaten path, like Season 1 “Twin Peaks” set at an out-of-the-way beach resort.
As for the weird bits: there’s a scene where CoinCoin can’t figure out how to kiss Christ, some blackface, a man attacked by a gull, and “clown” clones, not to mention the bizarre alien invasion (if that’s what it is) and a surprise at the end that I won’t spoil. Few of the comic bits—which stray close to border of anti-comedy—are funny in themselves; they only succeed through a relentless repetition that demonstrates Dumont’s sincere commitment to his style. Repetition is itself often the meta-joke: Carpentier does his “two-wheel” trick so often that his Captain complains it’s getting annoying (then continues to do it for several more episodes); doppelgangers are switched in mid-conversation so that conversations repeat themselves over and over and over. Meanwhile, Coincoin’s own plotline (now clearly secondary to the antics of the gendarmes) is almost entirely a realistic coming-of-age story; the boy is concerned with girls, mischief, and peer pressure, oblivious to what increasingly looks to be a modern Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style crisis until the events of the fourth episode force him to pay attention.
It’s hard to explain why Quinquin/Coincoin‘s blend of low-key absurdism, social awkwardness, grotesquerie, political swipes, and rural drama works; it seems like it shouldn’t. But it captures the Western world’s current mood of ambivalent anxiety as well as anything out there. An apocalypse is coming—maybe—and it’s actually sort of funny—a little.
Although it’s mostly of interest to those who saw the first miniseries, there’s no reason you can’t jump straight into this sequel first if you like.
The four episodes of Coincoin and the Extra-Humans are currently screening as a single long feature at the French Institute Alliance Française in New York City through July 28 and at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on July 26 only as part of the Boston French Film Festival. Lil Quinquin played Netflix briefly after its release, but is now streaming on the Criterion Channel. That seems like the likely eventual landing spot for Coincoin once its brief theatrical run concludes. We’ll keep you updated.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: