Mia Wasikowska in The Double (Dean Rogers)

Simon James (Jesse Eisenberg) is a non-person. He lives and works in a world somewhere between Brazil and Blade Runner. He is very good at the vague thing he does for a living. Too nervous to complete a sentence without stopping halfway through to recalibrate, he goes through life unnoticed and unloved. He has somehow disappeared from his job’s employee database, the elevator seems to have a vendetta against him, and his boss is Wallace Shawn, for God’s sake!

The single rose peeking through the sidewalk in this hellish world is Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), a co-worker who happens to live in an apartment complex across from Simon’s, and where he spies on her there via telescope. When she discovers this, she finds it reassuring. Not your average gal. She seems as lonely and lost as he is and he starts a slow, painful courtship.

And then the new employee shows up. He’s funny, enthusiastic, instantly likable, and resembles Simon exactly. His name is James Simon.

The Double is based on a short story by Dostoyevsky, though for my money, the influence that burns brightest here is the Coen Brothers. Director Richard Ayoade fills the screen with oddball faces, the humor is deadpan all the way through, and the camera work is as flashy (and as good) as Coen mainstay Barry Sonnenfeld. But there is definitely a unique touch that is Ayoade’s own, a sort of sweet and sour mix of comedy and pathos.

All the performances are first rate. Both Eisenbergs are well delineated and you feel deeply for Simon as you snigger at his misfortune. Mia Wasikowska manages to give a sweet spin on a pretty clichés part, and Wallace Shawn is Wallace Shawn, for God’s sake!

Interestingly, once Jesse Eisenberg meets, well, Jesse Eisenberg, the movie morphs into an old school 1990’s psychodrama a la Bad Influence as James Simon begins to usurp Simon James’s life. Though this slides the plot into a bit of a cliché (including the aforementioned dream girl just waiting to be corrupted by the villain), the film’s unique style and sense of humor (an odd, engaging combination of morbidity, sardonic and slapstick) keeps you riveted.