Directed by Kike Maíllo
Written by Kike Maíllo, Cristina Clemente, Fernando Navarro, based on the novel by Amélie Nothomb
Starring Tomasz Kot, Athena Strates, Marta Nieto
Runtime: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Unrated
Currently available digitally

By Audrey Callerstrom, Staff Writer

A Perfect Enemy is a sleazy mystery/thriller about an architect named Jeremiasz (Tomasz Kot) who finds himself trapped at a Paris airport and unable to get rid of a young woman named Texel Texter (Athena Strates). Texel seems wacky and extremely fun, but to Jeremiasz, she’s a bother. She demands he listen to her rambling, disturbing childhood stories. She dismisses him as rude when he tells her he wants to be alone. She talks to him when he puts in his headphones. Jeremiasz is stuck in a space that he cannot get out of with a person he met only moments before, when, out of pity, Jeremiasz let his driver stop so that the desperate and drenched Texel could catch a ride to the airport. As Texel planned, it resulted in both of them missing their flights.

A Perfect Enemy knows just the kind of movie it is, and could stand to lean into its campier instincts just a little bit more. It overestimates how much we care about Jeremiasz, a handsome, successful architect who we know on sight is a dick. The film also underestimates just how enigmatic Texel is. As soon as she starts talking about her childhood, including an anecdote about how she mashed together wet cat food and ate it with her hands, we want to hear more. She’s not a manic pixie dream girl, she’s not “crazy,” she’s something else entirely. Athena Strates knows that there’s room within the character to be funny, even if the movie overall is downright serious. Texel wears dark eye makeup, platform combat boots, and velvet coat. She is eager to find someone to listen to her wild stories about voodoo and murder and weird eating habits. I don’t know if I’d want to be close enough to Texel to be her friend but I’d love to hang out with her at the bar for a night just to hear these stories.

The mystery develops near the film’s later half as we find out who Texel is and what she wants from Jeremiasz. She certainly does want to torture him, poking and prodding him about his (ex?) wife. The film cleverly stages certain scenes within a model of the airport, which Jeremiasz designed. If Texel and Jeremiasz are sitting at a bar, we’ll see miniature versions of themselves propped up within the table model of the building. There’s also the vivid use of gray paint and melted concrete used in the opening and closing moments of the film. A Perfect Enemy tries to make a grander statement about “perfection,” which Jeremiasz lectures on in the opening scenes. If you’re as interested in architecture as I am (and I am not) this deeper meaning might get lost on you. Which is fine, because it’s underdeveloped anyway.

The filmmakers could have made the space feel more claustrophobic, because truly, when you’re at an airport, there is nowhere else to go. You’re stuck in a space and you don’t get to choose who you’re stuck there with. It’s going to be strangers, and you’ll see them enough to grow to detest them in some way. Why Jeremiasz keeps listening to Texel instead of shooing her away completely is not clear. It doesn’t seem like he’s attracted to her, or even interested in her stories. But she keeps going, much to our delight. The film also plays with memory. When Texel tells a story, it’s shown in flashbacks, and as if Texel can read Jeremiasz’s mind, she immediately corrects how he is imagining the story. She tells him that he’s projecting his own childhood onto her stories, which are much worse. A story she tells about pursuing a woman she finds attractive (Marta Nieto) only to hurt her and molest her is disturbing.

The film drops some clues at midpoint that clue you in to its final act reveal. This ends up being the film’s weakest link as it pulls back from its cringe-worthy social interactions to examine Jeremiasz’s inner psyche. There was something about A Perfect Enemy that reminded me of 2018’s Greta, a film I cannot recommend to anyone but I’m embarrassed to admit I sort of enjoyed. For all of this film’s faults, it is elevated by Athena Strates’ performance. It’s exciting to watch her on screen, and also a bit unnerving. You have no idea what Texel will say or do next, what twisted story she will tell about her childhood. How all this plays into the grand reveal is never clear, but I will certainly remember the image of a young girl eating wet cat food with her bare hands for a long time.