Before I Go To Sleep (12A.)
Directed by Rowan Joffe.
Starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Anne-Marie Duff. 92 mins.
When exactly was it that Nicole Kidman renounced speech for whispering? I think it coincided with her elevation to the position of the Mother Teresa of flop movies. She gently tends to their wounds as they pass peacefully onto the other side into the realm of un-demand.
Though Memento and 50 First Dates have robbed it of originality, S.J. Watson's debut novel still has a decent little premise. Christine Lucas wakes up every morning with no memory of the past 14 years and each daybreak her husband Ben (Firth) has to go through the events of her adult life with her. In secret she is seeing Dr Nash (Strong) who is trying to help her regain her memory and is getting her to record a video journal that is kept secret from her husband. Ben says she lost her memory in an accident; Dr Nash says that she was the victim of a violent assault that left her for dead.
It is a very simple set up – a who-to-trust tug of war between Firth and Strong. The one who always plays decent fellows? Or the one who is Hollywood's go-to, multi-ethnic bad guy? Is it a bluff or a double bluff?
The film is played out on a tiny scale, basically just the three characters and a few locations. It's not much but it is probably enough. Director Rowan Joffe (son of Roland director of The Killing Fields and The Mission) though can't quite bring himself to trust the material though, so he tries to ramp up the tension. For example there is a scene where Nash takes Christine to the place where her body was found in a container park near Heathrow airport. Just as she is trying to take it all in, she and the audience are jolted by a plane swooping noisily over them. It's a cheap trick and somehow actually detracts from the tension. The film acts classy, but it is fundamentally a vulnerable woman in peril movie, and one with a surprisingly nasty little streak.
Directed by Rowan Joffe.
Starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Anne-Marie Duff. 92 mins.
When exactly was it that Nicole Kidman renounced speech for whispering? I think it coincided with her elevation to the position of the Mother Teresa of flop movies. She gently tends to their wounds as they pass peacefully onto the other side into the realm of un-demand.
Though Memento and 50 First Dates have robbed it of originality, S.J. Watson's debut novel still has a decent little premise. Christine Lucas wakes up every morning with no memory of the past 14 years and each daybreak her husband Ben (Firth) has to go through the events of her adult life with her. In secret she is seeing Dr Nash (Strong) who is trying to help her regain her memory and is getting her to record a video journal that is kept secret from her husband. Ben says she lost her memory in an accident; Dr Nash says that she was the victim of a violent assault that left her for dead.
It is a very simple set up – a who-to-trust tug of war between Firth and Strong. The one who always plays decent fellows? Or the one who is Hollywood's go-to, multi-ethnic bad guy? Is it a bluff or a double bluff?
The film is played out on a tiny scale, basically just the three characters and a few locations. It's not much but it is probably enough. Director Rowan Joffe (son of Roland director of The Killing Fields and The Mission) though can't quite bring himself to trust the material though, so he tries to ramp up the tension. For example there is a scene where Nash takes Christine to the place where her body was found in a container park near Heathrow airport. Just as she is trying to take it all in, she and the audience are jolted by a plane swooping noisily over them. It's a cheap trick and somehow actually detracts from the tension. The film acts classy, but it is fundamentally a vulnerable woman in peril movie, and one with a surprisingly nasty little streak.