We, 2019, by Jordan Peele with Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke

Narcissus taken by his own image dies captured by his own vanity. The narrative device implemented by Jordan Peele in Noi is far from the concept of external beauty.

At the center of the film is the elaborate metaphor of the Doppelgänger, twice, the shadow, our reflection that comes to life. The coherence of the whole is achieved thanks to the ability to insert images of great optical effect into a possible imaginary, classic horror genres to make a complicated and intense film. Metaphysics comes after suffering, violence, fear; the shadow, the doubles, they are not monsters or hallucinations, it's just the others. The social stratum that we are used to considering when we read the news in the newspaper, or that we catch a glimpse of on our way to the office, formed by those people we hope not to meet on vacation.

In front of their doubles, the film's leading family can't just escape or fight, instead she is forced to carry out an examination regarding her own identity. Each member, in colliding with the other shadows, he discovers himself and the true nature of the people he loves the most.

We turns out to be an extremely convincing film, thanks to a great interpretation of the actors - in particular that of Lupita Nyong’o - and a set of classic elements of the genre, emerge at the right moment, in a crescendo of tension and content. Plato argued that love was the desire for what one does not possess. The doubles in Us are shadows that don't just appear in contrast to the light. Towards that light they walk, they come to violate it and try to manipulate it towards themselves. The choice of developing the evolution of the plot over long periods of time is interesting - as you might fear after a first moment of great anxiety and empathy towards the characters - but it becomes more complicated and extended, almost proposing moments of pause during which characters and the public try to understand what is about to happen. The atmosphere with which the ending is revealed is complex, the images with which the story opened are repeated and we slowly come to understand the true dualism of the last protagonist.

Francesca Salmeri