Monday 15 March 2010

Remember Me

Last night I decided that I wanted to see a movie before going to uni today so I set about finding something to see that obviously fit in with my time frame and tastes/interests.

Movie wise I am a very big fan of strange American Indie films that end up being more about the characters than about any discernible story line. Of course I also love the character stories that have the added bonus of a great story line, but it's not essential. Generally I have a dislike for commercial American movies and cheap comedies. For the most part I like foreign movies, especially from France and the UK.

Now that you have a bit of background about the types of movies I like, I will tell you a bit about how I like to see movies. I like to see them on my own, I like to browse around the night before and go in the next day or later the same evening, with no more knowledge of the film than a trailer or brief blurb, or even the knowledge that I like one of the actors in it. I like to keep things a secret.

So, last night I noticed that Remember Me was playing and I couldn't remember what that was, so I Googled the trailer. In the back of my mind I was aware that Robert Pattinson had been working on another non Twilight related film but I wasn't aware that it was finished let alone out in cinemas already. I am a little hesitant to admit this but I am a Robert Pattinson fan, this stems not from Twilight but from my status as an incredible a Harry Potter fan. Being the HP geek that I am when the dvd for the Goblet of Fire was released I dutifully watched all the special features including a 'guided tour' of the movie making process by the 3 foreign Champions. This sparked a great fondness for both Robert and Clemence Poesy. While I am strongly of the opinion that Twilight was a bad move for him career wise, I still like Robert. But I do understand that many do not.

So I rounded up the money and went to see it this morning, knowing next to nothing about it except that there was a somewhat romantic theme to it and it was apparently set in 2001. I went in hoping for a bit more than a sappy romance and was pleasantly rewarded.

However here is where I enter a grey area. I am not sure whether I found this movie sort of amazing because I like Robert or because it really was good. I also think that having no prior knowledge of the movie helped. But I will say that for me the performances were quite good and convincing. I have always been of the opinion that it is easy to portray happiness, or to play a villain but that it is difficult to convincingly portray proper sadness or melancholy and rightful anger. For me this was done pretty well, Robert was convincingly melancholy, but with reason, and it played on the whole feminine notion of wanting to fix things. So I spent most of the movie wanting to hug him.

Unfortunately reading last night that the movie was set in 2001 I spent the last 20 minutes of the film worrying because my sad movie had suddenly turned happy and this could only mean a sad ending and I had a gut feeling about where it was headed. I was right, but also surprised even though it was what I predicted. It was a pretty gutsy choice of ending, one I think people have been too scared to touch on. And I appreciated so much that it ended well...right. Sad movies that suddenly end happily ever after in a thoroughly unconvincing way annoy me. This is part of the reason why I favour foreign and Indie movies. I would rather an ending that was consistent with the film even if it was sad or unconventional.

I will say that when the film ended the 20 or so people in the cinema sat in silence for about 10 minutes before filing out without so much as a squeak. Surely its a good thing that they weren't all clamouring to complain and ridicule it...

So to wrap up this rather long winded vocalising of opinion I enjoyed Remeber Me and it left me contemplating once more the real life stories that people out there have.


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