You Look Like We
A mirror of two parallel lives
Directed by Malik Isasis
In You Look Like We, a fleeting encounter between a dancer and her exact double on a New York City subway platform unravels into a story of identity, connection, and letting go. Inspired by Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique, Director Malik Isasis crafts a film rooted in human resilience and quiet emotional depth.
With a background as a clinical social worker in New York City schools, Malik brings a unique sensitivity to the narrative, infusing the film with an intimate understanding of resilience. The film offers a cinematic mirror that asks: what parts of ourselves do we see in others, and what do we let go?
You Look Like We is visually and emotionally poetic, and you've mentioned it is inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique. What initially made you want to create a film like this, and how did you want to make it your own?
I've been an acolyte of Krzysztof Kieslowski's storytelling and aesthetics for years. His ability to confront audiences with the moral and ethical ambiguities of politics with careful compositions and camera movements, blurring the line between subjective and objective points of view. He trusts his audience enough to assume they will take away their own meaning. Many of his stories employ mirroring storylines, characters, or themes. I studied his filmmaking by watching his filmography over and over again.
There's an emotional weight in a lot of the film's silence. Dance becomes a kind of voice for the characters along with music. How did you approach movement to capture the story so well?
I'm not a dancer, but I love the art of it. It is an art form and a sport. A dancer has a finite amount of time due to the physicality of the form, and I find it fascinating to practice something with a limited amount of time. I enjoy working with dancers, so it's more of a collaboration. I have worked with dancers before (even made a feature film about them), and I tend to meet them through mutual connections — an unofficial referral system.
The twins in You Look Like We are friends with another dancer I know. Anabella was helping out a friend, a stills photographer, with whom I was shooting an experimental dance piece. Afterwards, we ended up taking the subway together and talking. Through conversation, I learned that Anabella was an identical twin and that she and her sister were dancers and photographers. Since my brain is always seeing Kieslowski, it didn't take long for me to pitch the idea to Anabella and Rainey. I drafted a script, and they began thinking about the choreography.
“This profession has given me nuance and the ability not to judge my characters, which in turn makes them more authentic.”
The subway and the dance studio feel like emotional counterpoints, one intimate, one anonymous. How important was location to your storytelling/how did you want each space to feel?
Very important. The Dancer character feels an unexplained sadness of her doppelgänger, The Pantomimist, whom she spots across the platform. Both women are experiencing the other's emotion. Loneliness can feel even more amplified in a place like New York City, and locations can visually communicate what a character may be feeling.
The visual texture of the film is grainy, cinematic and dreamlike, adding depth to the emotions on screen and how we feel when watching it. What was your approach to capturing that atmosphere with Junior Gung?
Visual texture is largely from the format of film. 16mm in particular. The anamorphic lens and the locations added ethereal qualities to it as well. All in combination. Junior Gung is actually me. It's my gaming pseudonym that I've grown attached to. Whenever I shoot my own projects, I use Junior Gung. Again, referencing Kieslowski provided me with a skeletal framework — compositions, colors, etc. —to build on. I watched The Double Life of Veronique. Although there was no budget to achieve the aesthetics of that film, we aimed at getting the heart. The emotionality.
As a clinical social worker, you’re very connected to how people cope with trauma, identity, and transformation. How do those experiences shape the human experiences you portray through film and with this story in particular?
My training helps me understand the psychology of decision-making. You can't be a therapist and judge people for the mistakes they make out of trauma, or depression, or whatever the ailment is. I've learned to listen more and not judge my characters. People do things that make sense to them, even if what they are doing doesn't make sense to us. When the behavior no longer makes sense to them, they change their behavior. This profession has given me nuance and the ability not to judge my characters, which in turn makes them more authentic. In You Look Like We, when The Pantomimist accepts that yearning her relationship no longer suited her, she decided to be okay and move on.
There’s a subtle narrative rhythm to how the two characters reflect each other, their lives never quite touching, but resonating. How did you think about pacing and editing in creating that mirror effect?
I think again, watching so much of Kieslowski's work. A lot of it was already in the script as well. Because I'm the cinematographer and editor I do get an idea while shooting of how things may cut together
The film ends without explanation, yet it lingers emotionally. What kind of reflection or feeling did you hope audiences would be left with after that final moment of recognition across the platform?
I trust the audience. Period. Stories are more affecting if audiences can project their feelings or experiences onto the story. There's an ownership there. I don't want to tell people how to feel; I would rather expose them to the story, and have them choose their own emotional journey, but that's the therapist in me.
What's next for you?
I'm currently shooting an independent narrative feature film, Night People, about the Obayifo, the West African vampire. In fact, I'm due on set in an hour
Writer/Director: Malik Isasis
Cinematographer: Junior Gung
Editor: Malik Isasis
Starring:
Anabelle Scarborough
Rainey Scarborough