It's hard to say whether or not Julia Roberts and Clive Owen have chemistry in their new film "Duplicity" because writer/director Tony Gilroy has decided to take the conventions of Hollywood romance and completely remove them in favor of creating a relationship founded completely without trust.

Now think about that for a minute: a relationship entirely without trust.  All functional relationships are built on trust whether they are platonic, romantic, corporate, etc.  We all need trust to function because without trust we can't move forward.  It's a requirement of society, just as much as not killing your neighbor and while we can debate the motives (I don't want you to kill me; mutual cooperation benefits us both) we can agree that society requires these basic social contracts in order to exist.  And underlying all of the film's flash, Hollywood smiles, espionage, and slick editing, Gilroy is attempting something insanely difficult.  The result is impressive but not entirely satisfying.

The film revolves around two former spies (Roberts and Owen) who make a play to defraud two rival companies (they're delightfully generic, almost in a "Procter & Gamble"-mold where they make a wide variety of consumer items).  One company is about to unleash a major project and Roberts and Owen are trying to play the sides against each other without getting caught.  That's the easy part.  The hardest part is whether these two can ever trust each other since their whole lives are founded on lying to others.  Can you have a societal norm such as love when you've completely undermined love's prerequisite: trust?

This is not to say that the film is trying to beat you over the head with these ideas.  It's just what I found myself chewing on for the past day as I've been thinking about the film and the ballsiness of this kind of relationship in a mainstream film.  It's all disguised under million-dollar smiles by two actors who are going to make you feel comfortable even though you have no idea what's going on.

That's the other aspect of "Duplicity" I really appreciated: it requires you to be an active viewer.  If you're someone who finds that they're constantly confused by twisty plotlines, you may want to save this for a rental and that way you can pause and have someone explain it to you.  I'm not saying this to be condescending but "Duplicity" does not slow down and really doesn't want to hold your hand.

Which is why the film's structure feels so odd.  For all the fast-paced conversations, complicated intrigue and variety of players, Gilroy, after coming out the doors with guns blazing (and a fantastic opening credits feature a great slo-mo, middle-aged man fight between Paul Giamatti and Tom Wilkinson as the CEOs of the rival companies), the structure of the film, which involves cutting back between the present and Owen/Roberts' relationship through time is very clear but also slightly dull and repetitive.  I almost wish that since the characters were constantly fucking with each other if Gilroy would just try to fuck with us since he's already demanding our full attention with his complicated plotting.

Sadly, "Duplicity" is one twist too heavy and while I can see why it's done thematically, it's a cheap twist and feels more like one more "Gotcha!" on your way out the door.  If Gilroy had laid it out and you were supposed to catch it, that would be one thing, but it's a cheap play and it doesn't feel worthy of this film.  It reminded me of the twist endings of "Frailty" and "Identity" where the twists were fantastic and then they just overdid it.  If your film has a bunch of twists and ends with "-ty", check yourself.

"Duplicity" deserves respect if only because it puts more faith into modern audiences than I do and most other filmmakers do.  It's an adult drama featuring a complicated relationship that tries to couch itself in traditional espionage mixed with satire about how corporations have such massive power and yet use it to such petty ends that they're mostly harmless.  I just this film trusted its audience enough to artfully deceive them.

Rating ----- B