Unraveling the mysterious world of ``The Enemy.'' Pleasure entangled in sweet chaos.

Interpretation 2: The world as seen by people with dissociative identity disorder

Think back to the sequence where Helen visits the university and meets Adam, a professor, for the first time. When they part ways and Helen calls Anthony, Adam has already disappeared into the building. This clever shot opens up another interpretation of the Adam-Anthony theory: that Adam and Anthony are two separate personalities with dissociative identity disorder.

Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, this disorder involves one personality usually awake while the other sleeps subconsciously, but the personalities can also talk to each other, as if they were facing each other's real selves. Throughout the film, no one sees Adam and Anthony together or hears their conversations. In Adam's personality, he is a teacher who is in love with his girlfriend Mary (Mélanie Laurent), and in Anthony's personality, he is an actor who lives with Helen. This double life is possible because the actor often goes out overnight for filming, and Mary doesn't stay at the teacher's apartment every night.

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The scenes where Adam and Anthony meet in the hotel or apartment are actually the world seen by one person with dissociative identity disorder. In the aforementioned scene at the university, Adam's personality recognizes Helen as a woman he has never met before, but when he enters the school building and Anthony's mobile phone rings, he instantly switches to Anthony's personality and answers the phone.

Interpretation 3: The man who met his doppelganger

Saramago's original novel was published in English under the title "The Double." The English translation of the German word "doppelganger," which refers to the phenomenon of seeing one's own image, is also "double." Doppelgangers are considered a type of hallucination, but historically there have been recorded cases of them being seen by many people, not just the person themselves, and some consider them to be paranormal phenomena.

This is a slightly more unrealistic interpretation than the two mentioned above, but it would not be inconsistent if Adam and Anthony were doppelgangers, and there have been several films in the past that have dealt with doppelgangers (I would like to discuss these in my next article ).

Doppelgangers are considered bad omens, and those who see their doppelgangers will encounter disaster or death in the near future. Adam discovers an actor who looks just like him in a movie recommended by a colleague, and becomes obsessed with finding the man, while Anthony, feeling threatened by him and his wife, is overcome by curiosity and accepts the meeting. The two meet, even though they should not, and can they no longer escape their tragic fate?

Interpretation 4: (Really) Enemy