Writer/director/actor Richard Ayoade has two feet firmly in comedic quirk. He's most recognizable as straight-laced, bespectacled Moss from the British comedy series The IT Crowd, and his directorial film debut, 2010's Submarine, was a smart, offbeat take on the coming-of-age genre. But while there's a subtle, sly sense of humor to Ayoade's new project, an adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novella The Double, for the most part, it's about as far from the world of quirky comedies as it's possible to get. It's not an entirely satisfying experience, if we define "satisfying" as "plot tied up with a bow on it"—but it is a curious, provocative, and absorbing one. by Alison Hallett