Duplicity
2014 · 14m · España
Directed by John Reck
Genres: drama, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
Duplicity is the story of Jacob, a man disturbed by his twin brother Alex who has invaded his life and his psyche; Jacob traverses an interior labyrinth while he meditates a decision that will change the trajectory of his life forever.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Twin-brother psychosis is the kind of premise everyone assumes they've seen done to death, but Reck's commitment to the surreal labyrinth—refusing to resolve into neat psychological realism—is genuinely perverse in the best way; most shorts would've chickened out and made it literal.
Duplicity stakes itself firmly in the lineage of Jungian cinema and structural surrealism—the interior labyrinth as formal meditation on doubling recalls both Fellini and contemporary essay-films—and the 14-minute constraint becomes an asset, not a limitation, forcing every edit to justify itself against the film's deliberate pacing.
The entire film hinges on Reck's decision to keep the brothers' dialogue sparse and let the spatial design do the psychological work—one choice about what NOT to explain transforms what could've been a therapy-session monologue into something architecturally unsettling.