*Spoiler Alert*
Last night I saw Trance with James McAvoy, Vincent Cassle and Rosario Dawson, three actors who I adore. I’ve been in love with James McAvoy since Atonement, at which point I learned he was Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and then promptly devoted the rest of my life to closely following his career. Also, Scottish accent. Can a person be more perfect?
I only know Vincent Cassel from Black Swan, and he’s certainly a good actor in that movie and weirdly attractive in general. Rosario Dawson is fantastic always. The problem here isn’t really with the actors. I thought they were pretty good. But the script, the plot, the whole movie, oh God what the hell did I spend a little under two hours watching this while I ate Sour Patch Kids until my tongue bled?
Let me recap: James McAvoy plays this fine art auctioneer Simon, who steals a $27 million dollar Goya painting at an auction in order to repay his gambling debts. So it’s an inside job which is kinda cool.
He was working with the guy who he owed the money too but then decided to try and steal the painting for himself (and then what, spend the rest of his life running from these guys?) Most of this we learn as the plot unfolds and all we know in the beginning is that this is a highly orchestrated painting theft. But Cassel’s character, Franck, intercepts Simon’s plan and a fight ensures and McAvoy is knocked on the head pretty hard and loses his memory. So he has no idea where he hid the painting. After this point the plot loses me.
After an unnecessarily grotesque torture scene (I am of the opinion that torture/physical pain scenes in general are usually more effective in inspiring that spine-tingly feeling when the film cuts away from the act of torture a hair before it starts to happen. Nope, not here. We get to watch all the grossness of Simon’s fingers being shredded. This doesn’t work because Simon can’t remember where the hell the painting is. Franck takes Simon to Elizabeth, the hypnotherapist (Dawson), in order to uncover this lost memory. He uncovers keys instead and everyone is pissed. Little does everyone know those keys go to the car where the painting (!) and a dead body (!!!!) are hidden. Together with the maggots, like the painting would’ve survived an environment like that what-the-hell-ever.
So a whole bunch of plot twists happen. Elizabeth is apparently the ex-girlfriend of Simon who he nearly killed because he was an abusive asshole. So she used her powers of hypnotherapy to make him forget her. Then she’s the very hypnotherapist Franck and Simon unknowingly seek out. In ways I could not follow she then manipulates everyone by creating false memories and sexing it up with both Simon and Franck (Dawson has the most perfect breasts on this planet. That is a fact. But she really should’ve picked a better movie to be nude in. It was literally pointless in Trance… she could’ve just kissed Simon and instead of running away and coming back 20 seconds later without clothes) until at the end it is revealed that Dawson was playing everyone all along and now she has the painting and hahahaha joke is on you, fuckers.
Except, wait, what? There’s two girls. One is dead and in the trunk being nibbled on by maggots. Elizabeth is that girl, she isn’t that girl. She’s implanted herself into Simon’s memories, but they really did date… but Elizabeth is alive, so who did he kill? And are Simon and Elizabeth working together or are Elizabeth and Franck working together? All the while Elizabeth is working for herself but then Franck tries to warn Simon but Simon doesn’t believe him and then Elizabeth is raped and Simon rescuers her and they run off together and I think Simon drowns at one point and Franck should’ve blown up in a fire-y car explosion then drowned but somehow survives that and we never know if Elizabeth actually has feelings for either of these guys or if she’s just a really fabulous actress herself.
It totally lost me. I can imagine all the script writers sitting around a table with all the possible ending twists and being like “But this ending is good! And this ending is so good! And no one will see this one coming!” before deciding to literally just put in every single plot twist ever thought of in the history of man and cramming it into a movie that started off SO interesting and then quickly fell apart. I don’t want complicated plot lines, I want a good story. The movie was so focused on being action-y and intense that it lost any real cinema feel to it. McAvoy’s Wanted left the same dry taste in my mouth. Too many plot twists, not enough story.
See, she’s all broken up in the mirror, asking, who is she, really? What’s her angle on this crime? She can’t be trusted.
As I was watching the first 15 minutes of the movie I kept thinking about all the fantastic different directions this film could go, none of which happened in the movie (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the final twist at the end didn’t make me feel like the movie challenged any of my plot twist ideas. The movie’s version failed to take hold of my imagination.)
Plus the whole film is about a Goya painting, which really becomes a side accessory in the movie. In my opinion, if you’re going to have a prominent piece of art as central to the plot, the art itself needs to become it’s own character and exert it’s own force on the characters. The painting could have been a giant diamond or something else entirely and it would’ve made no difference to the plot, filming, or characters. Good cinema examines the pull these objects have on us, deeper than greed or money. I will commend the film for the one point of depth that helped elevate the film: Elizabeth wanted the painting in order to get revenge on Simon (and maybe also Franck?) for the hurt he caused her. But it could have been presented in a different way, perhaps one that actually made sense to the viewer. I still don’t understand how this dead body came into play.
And apparently, it’s representation of hypnotherapy is pretty off the mark.
Skip this movie. It’s a headache to watch.
hsg
Hula Hooping Hannah 