TIFF 2011: DOPPELGANGER PAUL Review

The day that Karl almost died Paul came to him almost as a vision. Almost as a dream. Paul didn't know it. He didn't mean to. He didn't even notice Karl collapsing as he blacked out. Really there was nothing to it other than the fact that Paul was close enough to be the last thing that Karl saw before the darkness fell. And so now Karl has convinced himself that Paul is his doppelganger, his double, his spiritual equal alike in every way that matters despite the fact that they look nothing alike.

Paul learns this because Karl leaves a note taped to his apartment door, a note written after Karl has been following Paul on the streets for weeks. So what now? Paul could be angry, and he is a little bit. But mostly he's curious. And maybe a little flattered that someone would consider him worth following. He responds with a note of his own and before too long the pair arrange a meeting, a meeting where Paul first learns of Karl's magnum opus: A twenty thousand page manuscript titled A Book About How Much I Hate Myself, a book started when Karl was just ten years old, a book begun two years after Karl's parents died in a flaming bus crash. A book that would appear, one year after Karl and Paul's meeting, in edited form on store shelves bearing another author's name.

Clearly Karl and Paul need to confront the men who stole Karl's epic of self-loathing.

A dark and slyly funny comedy riffing on identity and the insatiable hunger for connection, Doppelganger Paul delights in the same sort of meta-comedy that we've come to expect from Charlie Kaufman, though co-directors Dylan Akio Smith and Kris Elgstrand deliver it here in a package not nearly as smug or neurotically self referential. Elgstrand's script balances cleverness neatly with character, his writing blessed with the sort of confidence that never feels the need to show off. It's an approach clearly shared by actors Tygh Runyan and Brad Dryborough who play Karl and Paul with an understated comfort and naturalistic ease that both feel like the sort of people you could bump into on the street of any major city.

With his short film Big Head co-director Dylan Akio Smith showed an uncanny ability to find a very real center of humanity in very odd characters - in that case a young boy wracked with a severe case of self loathing because his head was too big - and that ability is at the core of what makes Doppelganger Paul work. In the hands of Smith and Elgstrand the characters at the core of Doppelganger Paul - characters who would become grotesque caricatures with less talented hands at the helm - become living, breathing, even lovable human beings despite their more obsessive tendencies. Though the humor is rooted in insecurity it never comes at the expense of Karl and Paul, it is never mean spirited, and - more importantly - it is consistently funny.

A low key, low budget indie, it would be easy to overlook a film like Doppelganger Paul. That would be a mistake.