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Duplicity, the new film by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) has drawn some flak for being ‘too clever for its own good’. What is wrong with that?

It’s a corporate espionage-romantic thriller starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, who are spectacular together, and Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giammatti as warring CEOs of personal products conglomerates. The action moves back and forth over a five-year period, but there is a point to the chopped-up chronology. You think you know who’s playing whom but your assumptions are regularly disproved. That’s because the two leads are in the business of playing mind games, cons, disinformation, and as former spies (CIA, MI6) they can’t help themselves.

By keeping the audience on a need-to-know basis Gilroy is asking them to trust him, which is funny because his characters don’t trust each other, but a good ploy because his point is that someone is always manipulating someone else. Like the filmmaker and the audience. At one point the characters are rehearsing their lines for the con, and Julia stops and says, ‘Are you directing me?’ Gilroy reminds everyone that there’s one person directing the entire scheme, and that’s him.

Critics have compared the zingy exchanges between Roberts and Own to the best bits of the Katharine Hepburn-Cary Grant screwball comedies. Yes they’re witty and charming, but Duplicity constantly reminds us that they’re not spontaneous. They’re rehearsed, cold-blooded, and cynical.

The biggest joke is that the protagonists are in love with each other. Espionage is the metaphor for romance: Are you in love with each other, in love with the idea of each other, or in love with how clever you are or how clever you think you are when you’re in love? And is there really a difference?

Duplicity is only showing at SM Cinemas.