DVD review: Before I Go to Sleep

IMG_0124.CR2

IMG_0124.CR2

Published Sep 12, 2014

Share

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP

DIRECTOR: Rowan Joffe

CAST: Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong

CLASSIFICATION: 16 LV

RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes

RATING: ***

TEAMED again with Firth, her co-star in The Railway Man, Kidman (pictured) stars as woman with amnesia whose brain resets back to 13 years ago after each night’s slumber in the decidedly average psychological thriller Before I Go to Sleep.

Writer-director Joffe’s adaptation of SJ Watson’s best seller honours the lurid spirit of the page-turner enough to satisfy fans, but he doesn’t transmute the material into something richer and deeper the way, say, Alfred Hitchcock could, despite the film’s many nods to him.

The film opens with an extreme close-up on the bloodshot eye of Christine Lucas (Kidman), a woman who wakes up every morning and doesn’t recognise her bedroom, the man in the bed next to her (Firth) or even her own 40-year-old face since in her head she’s 27.

This is because she has atypical psychogenic amnesia, which means that since receiving a severe head injury 13 years ago she has struggled to store memories of anything that’s happened. She can retain a day’s events until she goes to sleep, but after a night the slate’s wiped clean again.

With a weary patience that suggests he’s explained the situation many times before, the man in the bed reveals he is Christine’s husband Ben, and that she had an accident which caused her amnesia.

When Ben goes off to work (he teaches at a high school), the phone rings and a man calling himself Dr Nasch (Strong) explains to Christine that he’s a neuropsychologist who’s been helping with her memory disorder.

He instructs her on where to find a camera in her wardrobe on which she’s recorded a video diary over the past two weeks, prompting an extended flashback to illustrate what she’s learnt so far.

It turns out there’s quite a lot that Ben hasn’t been telling Christine. For a start, it wasn’t an accident that caused her amnesia, but a brutal attack by an assailant, flash-cut memories of which start to emerge.

Also, Christine learns she had a close friend named Claire (Anne-Marie Duff), whom she starts to remember when Dr Nasch shows her a picture he has found in her medical file.

Ben insists Claire moved abroad after the accident, but it turns she’s very much within commuting distance and keen to see her friend.

Christine catches up on what she’s learnt from the diary each day, and starts to twig that Ben is not the gentle, doting husband he seems to be.

Meanwhile, she finds herself attracted to Dr Nasch, but while she may think he’s the swoony saviour sort, viewers will feel they’re being prodded to be more suspicious.

After all, he seems to have a permanent two-day stubble; and, worst of all, he’s played by Mark Strong, a bad guy in so many films (see, for instance, Kick-Ass, or Zero Dark Thirty, or John Carter.)

This is the sort of film where it’s difficult to discuss performances without giving away the big twists, so those sensitive to anything spoiler-ish should stop reading now.

Okay, now that these readers gone, it can be said one of the film’s minor virtues is how it plays with casting, exploiting expectations audiences have of actors like Strong and Firth.

It works especially well with Firth, who in the semiotics of British cinema especially is the very apogee of cuddly male rectitude and moral probity. Here, however, he shows off a dark side that’s shocking even for viewers who have read the book.

That said, the film isn’t a huge stretch for Kidman, who has played this sort of vulnerable woman-on-the-edge many times before.

There’s not the same nuance here that she displayed in, say, The Others or Birth, but despite her being the story’s anchoring consciousness, the script doesn’t flesh out her character much.

As his last feature, Brighton Rock, proved, Joffe has something of a knack of coaxing bad performances out of good actors.

There’s less damage this time to the cast’s reputation, but even so Joffe shows a singular lack of originality when it comes to the thriller mechanics, falling back on huge soundtrack surges to generate shocks and suspense, and leaving cinematographer Ben Davis and production designer Kave Quinn to do the heavy lifting when it comes to building atmosphere.

It’s a shame because this is exactly the kind of trashy read of a book that in the hands of the right director could have been elevated into something really special with its peculiarly female take on paranoia and anxieties about domesticity, ageing, memory and identity. – Hollywood Reporter

If you liked Trance or Welcome to the Punch you will like this.

Related Topics: