Dual director Riley Stearns explains the movie’s bizarre performances

Riley Stearns’ Dual It is precisely the sort of film that science-fiction fans love: A strongly personal vision of a whole new world. Guardians of the Galaxy’s Karen Gillan stars as Sarah, a woman who agrees to clone herself when she’s told she’s dying of an incurable disease. The clone is meant to take her place — as a representative of the cloning company cynically tells her, she’s paying to make sure her friends and family won’t have to be sad when she dies.

But then her fatal condition reverses itself, and suddenly she has to live with and pay support to the clone, who’s stolen her boyfriend, won over her mother, and generally is doing a better job of being Sarah than Sarah was. Legally, the clone can’t be destroyed, even though it’s no longer necessary, and Sarah is told she’ll have to battle it to the death for her place in society. Sarah decides to take on Trent, a trainer who is used to murderous violence.Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul) to teach her how to kill.

Dual raises a lot of big, interesting questions about society and humanity, but some of them have been overshadowed by the acting style in the movie — the characters are so deadpan that they seem unemotional, and they say the most outrageous things without giving away how they feel about it. It’s a style familiar from Stearns’ previous movie, the engaging, subversive comedy Self-Defense: The Art of Self-DefenseThis is his amazing first movie. Faults. However, Dual, it seemed to take viewers by surprise — even critics who enjoyed and praised the movie called the performances “eccentric, over literal, and stiff-backed” or “almost robotically numb, artificially stilted.” Critics who didn’t like the film were less kind.

Polygon sat down to talk to Stearns about those calculated performances, how his film fits into the sudden boom in multiverse movies, and the secrets people don’t get to see about the world of Dual.

This interview was edited for clarity and concision.

Photo by RLJE Films

One of the most divisive things about the film has been the characters’ unusual, exaggerated lack of affect. Why was this style chosen?

Riley Stearns The delivery is just what I want […] Somebody can say something insane, and then if you don’t say it like it’s a joke, I think it’s funnier. That kind of delivery works well with the dialog I write. Going into it a little deeper, the world itself is stylized, and we’re already creating this stylized space for everyone to live in. If people spoke in a normal way, quote-unquote, I think it would actually do damage against the world we’re creating. I don’t think somebody could walk into a movie like mine and speak normally and fit into the context of that world. It is the [absurdity]The dialogue informs and informs others. It all works together.

What’s what’s it like working to get experienced actors like Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul to the mode you wanted them in here?

Aaron and Karen have reached a point where they are now able to watch movies I’ve made. Karen and Aaron both had already seen. Faults Self-Defense: The Art of Self-DefenseSo they could tap into the place I was going before me even having a conversation. We discussed the differences between these films and how they differ from each other.

This just reinforces my initial thoughts about who I was. DualMore grounded than Self-Defense: The Art of Self-Defense. I’m finding that people find this movie even more alienating in some ways, which is so interesting. My brain may work a bit differently from what I am used to. I never wanted people to feel like these characters weren’t real people, but I wanted that disconnect in terms of emotionality and connection.

So yes, it’s interesting for them to come into the space, but they were fully present and willing to go there. And they’re such talented people that even if they’re used to doing something a certain way, they can snap into a tone or a style the second they need to, and they did fully commit.

Many of your characters appear to feel a deep, rooted anger. They express it through choice rather than through words or their faces. Do you think it’s more effective for a story to have people channeling anger in these subverted, underground ways?

I feel like there’s anger in Faults, from Ansel’s perspective, that life didn’t go the way he wanted it to go, and that despite his best efforts, it just keeps beating him down. And there’s an explosion off of that, in terms of his response to it. You can find it here. Self-Defense, I feel like Casey doesn’t really have anger, he just has this desire to belong, and to feel like he connects with other people.

And in this film, I feel like our lead character Sarah has given up, and maybe isn’t trying — she’s just fallen into this comfortable lifestyle that maybe doesn’t push her. So I feel like they’re all coming at life from different perspectives, but I feel like they all want similar things, which is for things to work out better for them. So I don’t know that I think about the anger of it all. It’s interesting that that’s something that you’ve gathered from it, which is part of the fun of watching art, reading, listening to music — we all have different connections to it. But at least that’s where those characters are coming at it from for me.

Photo by RLJE Films

It is often in cars that you can break your deadpan. It’s almost a running gag for the characters to show strong emotions when they’re driving. How do cars affect people emotionally?

The really simple answer is that I feel it’s a space where a lot of us do have emotional moments. At work or at school or whatever, maybe you can’t show any signs of emotion around your colleagues. I think there’s a certain sense of safety inside of our cars. Movies tend to concentrate on small details, minor irritations and how they can add up to a larger question. Are I happy with my life? Do I feel like I’m giving enough or getting enough from it? This is a minor point, but many of us tend to seek safety in our vehicles.

I know I’ve had moments like that. A moment when I broke down driving to Robyn songs, which was a joyful dance tune. It was during a track that I love, and which I get lots of positive vibes from. I felt an unexpected emotional break. I remember clocking that, and saying “That could be an interesting space to have a breakdown.” And then it popped up a few times in other parts of the movie. There aren’t a lot of moments in this film where people can fully embrace how they’re feeling. The clone support group at the end of film was another place where I felt comfortable to explore a different world for a few moments, and then return to the one we are living in.

We’re having a big moment right now with science fiction stories about multiverses and alternate possibilities, from Into the Spider-VerseYou can find more information here Everything, Everywhere at the Same TimeYou can find more information here What If…? To Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The movie also features a woman who considers the alternative paths she could take. Is this a part of a larger trend or movement?

I don’t necessarily consider it directly related to those movies. But I think it’s something that’s come from our shared experience, post-COVID and post-lockdown. […]This film was written in 2018. I had the idea for it at the beginning of 2016. But I do think that coming out of COVID — honestly, I was so in the middle of it when we were making this film.

The film was shot in 2020. This was the film that made it one of the most popular movies of all time, and one of our first independent films. [to return to production]. It was difficult to get out of this experience, that loneliness and the disconnect with other people. I think it’s impossible for those experiences not to pop up in the way that I directed, or the way that the movie feels, even though the script stayed the same from 2018 to 2020. People like my sister are — she’s one of those people who lost her job [during the quarantines]She made the decision to reinvent her self and went back to school in order to do so.

Karen’s dual roles are seamless, which is a special benefit. This was an important technological problem? Have we gotten to the point with digital media where it’s easy to do something this visually perfect?

Thanks to the VFX crew. It’s a Canadian company that was brought on board that just absolutely killed it. As you stated, we wanted to achieve seamless integration. It was not something I wanted to draw too much attention. Karen sometimes has to be opposite of herself. I wanted them both to feel genuine, and not just an effect. I know that’s a very obtuse, overly stated answer, “We just wanted to look real,” but part of that was not overdoing it.

So panning the camera to give a sense of motion as a character is walking in and out of frame, and making it feel like they really are in a room together, and having their audio match and track with them, it’s all very calculated stuff. It’s not necessarily an easy thing to do, but we did use motion-control cameras, which allow you to re-create a camera move perfectly, any time you need to do it, to the pixel. Split-screening is easier to do for VFX artists, as it allows them to combine two images.

It would lie if I claimed I was able to do it from the beginning. I learned a lot while directing — the big thing for me was knowing how to efficiently schedule our camera moves, and schedule Karen to go to hair and makeup to change over to the other character. This is because you can lose up to 30 minutes from the character’s time going to hair, make-up, or costumes. Then you have to come back and reset our take. So there was a lot of learning on the job, and it’s not necessarily easy. It’s easy when there are good people around.

It’s never clear whether Dual’s society really does believe somebody can be utterly replaced by somebody who looks like them. There are hints that it doesn’t. Are we critiquing capitalism by showing how companies make these terrible alternatives? Criticizing relationships and society because they’re all so flawed? What’s the big picture for you?

It was not something that I really considered. There obviously is a comment on capitalism, in the way the procedure is sold to people, and the way you’re thrown into debt — and not only you, but the people after you, and the people after that. It’s pretty on the nose; it’s there.

But, I find it more true. Dual is about our relationships with other people: how we connect with other people, what happens if there’s a better version of you. Not literally, because obviously we don’t have clones going around in the real world. But, like, if somebody starts working alongside you, and they’re better at your job than you are, and they’ve got less experience, or whatever it is — you’re always comparing yourself to other people.

The big thing for me, at least coming from it from my perspective, is I always want to be cognizant of the fact that everyone’s different, and we all have our different paths. As long as you’re doing the best job that you can do — I know that sounds corny, but that’s all you can ask for. And when we start to compare ourselves to other people, that’s where problems arise.

So I think that’s probably the closest thing I could say was actually on my mind while writing it. But the truth is that most of the stuff you write comes from your heart. And then you let it go. Oh, that’s interesting. Not to make it sound like it’s by chance, but sometimes chance happens while you write, and there’s a lot of fun there, too.

The film’s screen feels small in comparison to the vastness of the world beyond. You did a lot in world-building. Are there things about this world that that would be useful for people to know or that you didn’t have a way to get into the story?

If something isn’t in the movie, it doesn’t need to be known by the audience. But it helps me and the crew — and particularly the cast — to know more. Just like I understand why cloning is possible in this particular world. It was a process that I knew about. [around fatal illness]It is something I can actually use and enjoy, not something anyone could do. The movie was a short story I had written in 2017. I got only 20 pages done. That short story was originally my idea to be adapted into the movie. After I was done, Self-Defense: Art of Self-DefenseAnd I knew that was what I would do. Dual next, I knew I probably didn’t need to finish the short story, that I was ready to just go to the script. In the short story, there were a lot more implicitly stated things that didn’t need to be in the script, and I was able to use that to help the world. But if anything, I almost use it as a joke in the movie that you’re never given any more information than you need. This is what I did.

DualIt is currently in theatres and will stream on AMC Plus. The film can also be digitally and on-demand rented on May 20, 2018.