Trance:
***/*****, or 6/10
Danny
Boyle's attempt to mindfuck us, which proves only half successful,
witnesses the weaving of a stylistically elaborate mosaic but a less
well conceived narrative that turns increasingly less gripping. The
first 40 minutes delivers a good set-up, as we follow an art heist at
an auction, where a small band of robbers led by Vincent Cassel
(always a good choice to feature as a bad boy in any movie) makes off
with a painting by Goya that has just sold for over 27 million
pounds. At least, they thought they got away with it. In a sweeping
bit of exposition the protagonist, the mentally troubled auctioneer
James McAvoy (who does a fine job mixing his usual physical
attractiveness with a somewhat unhinged and erratic personality), has
just directly educated us, the audience, in the veritable
impossibility of stealing paintings at auctions, partially thanks to
the well timed expertise of art protectors like himself. Thing is,
he's in on the ploy. But not really, as he has a hidden agenda all
his own. That severely backfires on him as he gets hit in the head
after hiding the painting prior to the robbery, thus forgetting its
location, much to the chagrin of his fellow conspirators who do not
take this failure lightly and soon have no choice but to turn to a
cold and professional hypnotherapist (Rosario Dawson, doing a better
job than usual) when their own physically uncomfortable methods of
persuasion fail to reveal the knowledge they seek. Dawson all too
easily gets drawn into their shady world of plots and
doublecrossings, by her own testament because she's bored of the
dreary routine of her work, but obviously because she's fascinated
and possibly charmed by McAvoy's pained art thief. And that's when
things start to go from an intriguing premise to an ever more
disappointing pay-off, as we soon find something else entirely is
going on, and this whole movie was never really about stealing art so
much as it was about an ex-couple with an alarming past reconnecting
thanks to Dawson's mental machinations (think of it as the crime
thriller version of Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind, just not nearly as compelling). The problem is, the art
theft plot intrigued us much more than this renewed lover's quarrel
does, but soon gets snowed under in favour of the latter plot line.
At least strong performances throughout and the occasional solid
action sequence and moment of mental shock (i.e., gore) provide some
distraction from ever more jumbled and chaotically structured plot
development that just can't seem to be able to let us reconnect with
the movie itself when the damage is done. And just where was that
darn painting? For all we care, it might as well have been shoved up
Dawson's clean shaven beaver, which we get to see in close-up twice.
Lucky us, but this movie would have had more resonance in terms of
being memorable if it had also featured a more carefully balanced
plot that doesn't end up in blatant melodrama that you can't, and
don't truly care to, wrap your mind around.
