Before I Go to Sleep, 2014.
Directed by Rowan Joffe.
Starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong and Anne-Marie Duff.
SYNOPSIS:
An amnesiac woman tries to regain her memories, as terrifying new information causes her to trust no one.
Before I went to see Before I Go to Sleep I asked a couple of people I knew who had read the book what they thought of it. The words that came up most were ‘unsettling’, ‘harrowing’ and ‘haunting’. Rowan Joffe’s adaptation, having also written the screenplay, lives up to the expectations and plays on these element to create a deeply unsettling and tension filled film.
Nicole Kidman plays Christine Lucas, a woman whom loses all the information she has gathered each night when she falls asleep. She wakes up with no idea where she is, quickly learning from her supposedly supportive husband Ben (Colin Firth) of what has happened. The film focuses on 2 weeks of her life, where she is being helped by a neurological specialist Doctor Nash (Mark Strong) to piece back together her memory and the shocking revelations that come with that.
The film’s plot is simple but incredibly effective at creating an unsettled tone, with the audience knowing little more than Christine Lucas herself. We go through the experience alongside her, with Kidman’s performance making it effortless for us to empathise with her. As her emotions evolve throughout the feature, we feel those too and much like Christine Lucas we do not know who to trust. It plays on the audience’s fears as we can’t even begin to imagine the horror to wake up not knowing where 15 years of our life have gone; the emotional strain of discovering and re-discovering the tragedies that have taken place in between.
Mark Strong and Colin Firth keep the audience on tenterhooks as it is clear there are deeper motives and intentions than either are letting on, however are both ambiguous enough that is never clear until the end who we can trust or what those intentions even are. The film suffers towards its conclusion from quickly going stale, but has enough in dramatic twists and tension leading up to that point it is only a small flaw.
Whilst Before I Go to Sleep uses some the old tried and tested methods of creating tensions i.e. stranger in the house, delusional imagination and sowing seeds of distrust throughout, it does so in a simple way that fits the story and keeps it thrilling and entertaining. Throw in the performances by the three leads and you get a simple but emotionally engrossing feature that’ll keep you guessing throughout.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★ ★
Matt Spencer-Skeen
Originally published September 5, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
