First Hit: Nicole Kidman was outstanding as a woman who cannot remember one day from the next.
This is not a film that will have a large audience as there is little that is uplifting about the story.
Christine (Kidman) wakes up every day and has no memory of the previous day. She wakes up in a man’s arms, doesn’t know who he is. She goes into the bathroom where there is a wall of pictures showing her and her husband, getting married, kissing, holding each other and they are appropriately labeled. She comes back into the bedroom and her husband Ben (Colin Firth) begins to explain who he is and what has happened to her.
She also is seeing, unbeknownst to Ben, a therapist who calls her every morning and asks her to review a video camera hidden in her closet. She watches the video she has taken of herself over the previous days, which begins her learning process for the day. At the end of each day she has a story, only to forget it by the next morning.
However, is her husband her husband? Is her friend her friend? What was her life before the accident which rendered her with this memory affliction?
Kidman is very believable. I am constantly amazed as how she can take these odd, sometimes dark, and brooding parts and bring them to life in a way that is so engaging. Firth is almost perfect as the guy who shows, remorse, anger, and darkness while being human. Rowan Joffe wrote and directed this film. From a dialogue point of view there were moments of crisp beauty and other times it seem to drag a little. However, the direction was very strong. He got a lot out of the actors, while creating a feeling of brooding darkness with both the sets in the house as well as outside (rarely sunny and the in nondescript home).
Overall: Strong acting with a difficult non-uplifting subject ended as a good with a limited audience film.