'Duplicity' Confounds and Delights
Clever espionage/romance flick keeps the audience guessing
Mar 29, 2009
Many films can only do one well; some can do neither well. One example of a success story in a similar vein to Duplicity is 1963’s classic Charade, a la Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.
In the latter film, Hepburn plays a widow confronted by her recently-deceased husband’s mysterious past, more specifically by menacing strangers who claim she knows the location of a fortune belonging to them, but stolen by her late hubby. Cue Cary Grant, a debonair double-crosser whose identity no one is sure of. He offers his services to Hepburn as a detective and protector, but Hepburn wonders if he isn’t in league with her husband’s enemies. Confounding matters even further, Hepburn finds herself romantically drawn to the mysterious Grant.
It may sound convoluted, but it’s intrinsically a film-friendly formula: girl meets boy, girl doesn’t trust boy, girl and boy join forces to defeat larger threat, girl still doesn’t trust boy.
It’s applied well in Duplicity. The romantic tensions between two corporate spies Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and Ray Koval (Clive Owen) contrasts the larger espionage plot with pleasantly comedic results.
The Plot
A chance encounter in 2003 brings the two together for a passionate one night stand. When they meet two years later under similar circumstances, they decide that a life together (along with $40 million or so for general expenses) would be ideal. But how to do it?
The two decide to infiltrate warring corporations, plant their roots in intelligence services thereby gaining access to corporate secrets and then sell the secrets for offensively large sums of cash on the open market.
They settle on rival cosmetic firms run by two men who hate each other’s guts, played to comedic perfection by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti. In fact, to give us a taste of the level of hatred going on here, director Tony Gilroy treats us to a slow-motion montage of Wilkinson and Giamatti kicking the tar out of each other during the opening credits, while their personal aides look on.
Koval and Stenwick pick one company each and begin to gather the goods and discover that Wilkinson’s firm is about to release the biggest cosmetic product since soap. Let the espionage ensue.
Chemistry is strong between Roberts and Owen
The trouble is that Koval and Stenwick don’t trust each other in the slightest. Even as they close in on the prize, the quarreling intensifies.
Roberts and Owen play off each other well, and although the atmosphere surrounding them isn’t sizzling, the two actors generate a genuine sense of emotional attachment as they grapple with issues of trust and love. “Would it make any difference if I said I love you?” asks Roberts. “If you said it or if I believed you?” is the reply from Owen.
In the midst of an exciting corporate war, that’s the real issue at stake: two people, trained to be untrustworthy, grappling with paranoia and love.
The storyline is sometimes hard to follow and the numerous flashbacks have the potential to confuse viewers. But there is enough of a human element at play in the narrative to compensate for any confusion. Just as Charade did 46 years ago, this film gets it right.
