Before I Go to Sleep

Rowan Joffe’s Before I Go to Sleep — despite some handsome cinematography and an excellent cast — is the cinematic equivalent of a light breeze. It’s ephemeral and — fittingly, since the film’s main premise revolves around an amnesiac — is quickly wafting from my memory. Before I Go to Sleep, despite how it might appear on the surface, is unfortunately too languid, uneventful and emotionally vapid to work. It just sits there on the screen and does little else.

The film’s primary conceit isn’t exactly original, with similar ones being used in Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000) and even the Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore rom-com 50 First Dates (2004). The idea is that Christine (Nicole Kidman) wakes up every day with the past couple decades’ worth of memories gone. She begins to store new memories, but whenever she falls asleep, they disappear. According to her husband (Colin Firth), Christine’s amnesia is the fault of an accident, though it’s quickly made apparent that he’s not giving her the entire story, presumably to save them both the stress. Complicating matters is the doctor (Mark Strong) who’s secretly helping Christine, giving her a video camera to use as a diary and telling her that some of what her husband has told her isn’t completely accurate.

Before I Go to Sleep then turns into part whodunit, part thriller, as Christine slowly unravels the truth while never quite knowing who she can trust. Unfortunately, the mystery parts aren’t very engaging (the movie’s basically got three characters, so it’s not hard to see where things are heading) and the thriller aspects aren’t thrilling. The latter has problems due to the stodgy tone of the film and one of those scripts that relies on total incredulity. While I don’t totally fault Kidman’s performance, it’s too detached and inward to really feel engaging. It’s certainly a reasonable way to approach the material (she is a woman fenced off from the world thanks to her condition), but it does prevent the audience from relating to her. Firth makes out a bit better as the loving husband who must watch his wife — and himself — suffer, but this only happens in small spurts, something the film can’t keep up with.

As a whole, the film has one of those plots that only works as long as you don’t pay too much attention to its inner workings — and it relies way too heavily on brutality as a substitute for excitement. But even the film’s tastelessness is tepid and — at least in the film’s far-fetched climax — unintentionally funny (due at least in part to a clothing iron ex machina). It’s the kind of movie where you know a twist is coming, and you spend far too much time waiting on this twist, only to find out it’s not all that clever to begin with. And while, as a whole, Before I Go to Sleep doesn’t do much egregiously wrong, and its missteps are slight, they are numerous. Rated R for some brutal violence and language.