Before I Go to Sleep (2014)
Directed by Rowan Joffé
A woman wakes up every day, remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her.
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25 films that influenced Before I Go to Sleep
What critics say influenced Before I Go to Sleep
Joffe wisely doesn't ape Christopher Nolan's approach in the brilliantly executed Memento (to do so would have invited unfavorable comparisons) but his sure-handed (albeit conventional) approach to the material only goes far enough to make the setup compelling.
Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth and Mark Strong add value to this British psychological thriller with faint echoes of Memento in that its heroine suffers from a perilous case of amnesia.
In a twist that will probably have any neuropsychiatrists in the audience tsk-tsking to themselves, this already "atypical" case of anterograde amnesia — the kind that inspired Christopher Nolan's brilliant "Memento" as well as the brain-dead rom-com "50 First Dates" — also erased years of her life from before the accident, including her marriage.
Let’s say it can, and let’s even say that it’s not really a problem that this is a sloppy ripoff of “Memento.”
A shameless, mostly sanitized rip-off of better genre offerings like Memento and Diabolically Yours, Before I Go To Sleep imagines, soap-opera-style, that simply thinking really hard and occasionally being jolted by gruesome pictures can reverse rare forms of amnesia.
From the stylish mysteries of Hitchcock's Spellbound to the art-house thrills of Memento , the horrors of Angel Heart, the sci-fi experiments of Total Recall , the tragicomic heartbreak of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , and even the goofy romance of 50 First Dates , memory – or the lack of it – has provided a nifty plot device for a dazzling array of cinematic crowd-pleasers.
The 2004 romantic-comedy “50 First Dates” plunged into this very theme, yet obviously that film was meant to emphasize how cute and romantic this situation could be.
In a twist that will probably have any neuropsychiatrists in the audience tsk-tsking to themselves, this already "atypical" case of anterograde amnesia — the kind that inspired Christopher Nolan's brilliant "Memento" as well as the brain-dead rom-com "50 First Dates" — also erased years of her life from before the accident, including her marriage.
From the stylish mysteries of Hitchcock's Spellbound to the art-house thrills of Memento , the horrors of Angel Heart, the sci-fi experiments of Total Recall , the tragicomic heartbreak of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , and even the goofy romance of 50 First Dates , memory – or the lack of it – has provided a nifty plot device for a dazzling array of cinematic crowd-pleasers.
Since we’re not that lucky, the film’s rancidness lingers, especially when you start comparing it to similarly themed flicks like “Memento” and “50 First Dates.”
The 10-year-old comedy 50 First Dates is notable for only two reasons: it was the last time Adam Sandler was arguably funny, and it was the first time anyone made up this particularly stupid form of amnesia, in which the subject loses their memory every time they fall asleep.
The story, I do not know if it is faithful to the novel or not, is merely a dramatic “50 First Dates” with lots of twists – not many believable – that propel the film to its confrontational conclusion.
From the stylish mysteries of Hitchcock's Spellbound to the art-house thrills of Memento , the horrors of Angel Heart, the sci-fi experiments of Total Recall , the tragicomic heartbreak of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , and even the goofy romance of 50 First Dates , memory – or the lack of it – has provided a nifty plot device for a dazzling array of cinematic crowd-pleasers.
Hitchcock seized on it for his classic Spellbound and 55 years later Christopher Nolan fashioned a cinematic jigsaw around it in Memento.
As the film became ever more numbingly alienating, not to mention enervating, my thoughts turned towards the 1945 gothic romance Love Letters, which also used amnesia as its theme.
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But in addition to Ingrid Bergman in “Gaslight,” one can recall actresses as different as Barbara Stanwyck and Doris Day involved in such claptrap, the former in “Sorry, Wrong Number” and the latter twice, in “Julie” and “Midnight Lace.”
That's not just because the film's amnesia conceit has been used before in such varied pictures as "Memento," "Clean Slate," "50 First Dates" and "The Bourne Identity."
There’s also a little of the Dana Carvey movie “Clean Slate” and the serious, superlative “Memento” here.
Imagine Groundhog Day without any of the good bits.
The plot conceit, in which Christine forgets each day’s events as soon as she goes to sleep, has a vague resemblance to “Groundhog Day.”
A sort of inside-out “Groundhog Day” crossed with “Memento,” the thriller “Before I Go to Sleep” begins with an intriguing, if very movie-ish, premise: A woman (Nicole Kidman) wakes up each morning having no memory of recent days or even years.
Imagine Groundhog Day meets Memento, with a jot of 50 First Dates and then take out anything remotely intriguing, suspenseful or funny.
But in addition to Ingrid Bergman in “Gaslight,” one can recall actresses as different as Barbara Stanwyck and Doris Day involved in such claptrap, the former in “Sorry, Wrong Number” and the latter twice, in “Julie” and “Midnight Lace.”
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Yet the footage that kept unspooling in my own forgetful mind was from Wolfgang Petersen's Shattered , an underrated adaption of Richard Neely's novel, which draws heavily on the "amnesia noir" flicks of the 40s, and closely prefigures the enjoyable twists and turns of Before I Go to Sleep .
This sort of helpless damsel-in-distress stuff has been done to death over the years, with Hitchcock alone using it as a vehicle for both Joan Fontaine in “Suspicion” and Grace Kelly in “Dial M for Murder.”