I loved Enemy – and I concur with your final summing up at the end – both Adam and Anthony are the same person. Re: the spider image: I think it doesn’t represent woman, but the ‘archetype’ of the mother, specifically. The vision with the colossal spider towering over the city brought immediately to mind Louise Bourgeois’ scupture Maman – the whole look of the skyscraper-sized spider is so similar to the sculpture it seems to me that it’s an intentional visual reference. The reason for the ‘split’ between the two aspects of the same person – Adam and Anthony – then appears a metaphor being played out about his ambivalence about his impending fatherhood, linked with the psychological issues he has with being unable to integrate his idea of sexually attractive women (associated with ‘freedom’ from being ‘tied down’ – or perhaps ‘caught in the web’ of commitment?) with the notion of those same women being mothers.

The woman in the sex/strip club crushing the tarantula under her high heel then symbolizes her ritually disowning or turning-away-from the archetype of motherhood (at least in that performative context, which is really what the men are there for: a performance that is really geared around catering to their desire to explore the uncommitted side of their sexuality: women playing the role of idealized sex objects, rather than real, complicated, messy people.

I’m fascinated by Villeneuve’s comment about the film being about repetition, though: I’ll have to give it another viewing with that in mind… It’s always striking – and a feature of good filmmaking, or storytelling in general, I think – when the director or author produces something that is rich enough in its imagery and complexity that it can support multiple readings, even, perhaps, beyond those they publicly state, or even maybe consciously intended. Repetition is certainly a defining feature of addictive behaviours, and the sex/strip club could be viewed in that light as a kind of ‘vice’ or addictive behaviour those men are continually engaging in – even if it’s not actually real, but more a metaphor for escapist fantasies of being ‘free and easy’ that married men with, or expecting, children might continue to entertain… and perhaps then the film could be metaphorically talking about the failure to fully commit, and the ‘split’ between the uncommitted, freedom-seeking, idealizing, and perhaps rather immature aspect of the male psyche, and the more grounded, more mundane, but also more mature aspect.