Directed by: Rowan Joffé
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Mark Strong, Colin Firth and Anne-Marie Duff
I love a good suspense/mystery film, especially when the mystery concerns the mind or places its clues in the hero’s mind. A director named Alfred Hitchcock was amazingly good at that. With films like “Vertigo”, “Psycho”, and “Dial M for Murder”, he personally set a trend and a genre. Today with the success of the recent hit film “Gone Girl” a new popular film genre has begun to emerge on the scene, let’s call it the “marriage thriller” or even better, the “Chick Noir” mystery, and you’re about to see a batch of them.
This latest taut British thriller is based on S.J. Watson’s best selling novel and was adapted for the screen by director Rowan Joffé (The American, 28 Weeks Later). It casts Nicole Kidman in the lead role as a vulnerable heroine at the center of a world that to her is a constant ongoing now, without memory she has no past, present or future. It’s similar in concept to Drew Barrymore’s character in “Fifty First Dates”, but this time it’s played strictly for real, a problem that leads to a mystery that won’t go away until it’s solved, one way or another. If I sound a little vague here it’s because I don’t want to throw out any spoilers.
Here’s the storyline:
Christine (Kidman) is a woman who wakes up every day with no memory as the result of a traumatic head injury 10 years earlier. Every morning is a nightmare of not knowing where she is or whom she’s with. Every morning it’s her faithful husband Ben (Firth) who must explain her world to her. Left alone most days to fend for herself, the phone rings, it’s always her doctor (Strong) explaining to her about her therapy and setting up their meetings. When unexpectedly, frightening new truths begin to emerge in her mind, she is forced to question everything she struggles to understand about her life and everyone in it.
It’s a stylish mystery from a director who really knows how to keep the audience guessing every second as he keeps the twists and turns coming at just the right speed and at just the right moment. He builds tension as easily as we spread butter on toast.
Although it only seems like a docile British thriller, until it isn’t, the cast is really terrific and as you’d expect, the film itself is both slick and stylish. If I have any arguments with the film at all, it’s with Kidman’s rather vapid performance and that although I enjoyed watching it, I think the story’s resolution took a bit too long.
My take, women are going to like this film, and the mystery’s good. So, if you want to rack up some brownie points, make it a date film.
