In the open, the such described Doppelganger Production Committee asks its audiences: "What would you do if you ran into your perfect double, your "doppelganger" - someone who looks exactly like you?" In classic thriller fashion, the opening proceeds with added violins a-screeching and horns a-pulsing, yet this self-described "most frightening film yet" plays more like a hallucinatory, intellectual endeavor than that of the straight tingler the tag–line portends.
Doppelganger jumps to and fro between concurrent story-lines. Firstly, we see a woman, later known to us as Yuka (Hiromi Nagasaku), leaving a home improvements store as she waves to her brother Takashi, who appears to be aimlessly wondering theough the store's parking lot. Yuka offers him a ride back to the house they share (while he's studying), but he all but ignores her calls. Yuka returns home to a phone call which informs her that her brother, whom she has just seen, is at the area hospital...deceased! This, of course, is a shock. But, a now confused Yuka notices that Takashi is sitting in the next room, writing away on his computer.
Cut to an engineer named Hayasaki (the great Koji Yakusho). He's an idea-man at a large electronics company working to perfect his lasted project — an so–dubbed artificial body that will revolutionize the lives of the paralyzed. After a successful first series of tests for the company board, to secure further funding, Hayasaki is then criticized over the pace of the project and asked to either finalize the design or accept a do–nothing management position and let someone else finish his work. He, of course, refuses. Frustrated and insulted, Hayasaki heads home... only to discover he's already there! The film then vacillates between Hayasaki's and Yuka's stories until a point when they find themselves sitting on opposite sides of the same table. How can they help each other?
Doppelganger is truly fantastic. Many will disagree. Kiyoshi Kurosawa isn't known to just slap together a film without purpose, and after a couple of viewings the brilliance dawned on me. Beyond the notion of a doppelganger in the first place, a duality erupting into being (under abnormal or stressful circumstances) and what is to be done in this event lies at the film's epicenter. What's even more outstanding is that the movie itself acts as the character which leads. The first half is tense, ambitious, and wrought with friction. It's dark. The latter half is quite different — one might say the opposite of the first. It spins irreverent, lively, and comedic — filled with light and life. Dare I say meaning?
Doppelganger is a much deeper film than most may be willing to give it credit for being, but none could argue its originality. I laughed out loud at the crazy times and gasped at every swing of some object bound for a certain lead character's cranium. A bold piece of work.
