Review of Away from Her (2007) by Dianam — 27 Jul 2007

There are moments of transcendence here (the two most memorable being the aerial shot of christie in the snow field, and the use of neil young's "harvest moon"), but without any believable timetable, the whole thing turns supermaudlin, confusing, and frankly, tedious. I kept waiting and waiting for fiona to say it'd all been just a well-acted hoax, that her rapid memory loss was aimed either to make grant move on with his life, or to finally punish him for that buried-but-not-forgotten-and-thus-not-buried-deep-enough indiscretion he made with a college student in the 70s. and speaking of which....

????!!? those flashbacks are shady. at one point I actually thought the girl would rise from the past--or from the dead--a la "what lies beneath." I could name a number of other "huhs?", if asked. maybe there wasn't enough time to show fiona's brain slowly unhinge and let the flood wash away grant's love. but one month?? one month in which she learns new things, suffers no fears, no violent outbursts, but loses every morsel of her life before??!! I will admit christie is exquisite. I could stop wishing i'll be half so earthy when/if I get old. olympia dukakis is hilarious, as always, though I don't think she was trying to be. oh, but I do love watching her mask break. polley shouldn't have been so verbatim in her translation from the short story. she needed either to expound on grant's affair, or do away with it completely. faboo camera work, however. all four points for that.