Review of Before I Go to Sleep (2014) by Sue J — 23 Dec 2014

The 2014 mystery thriller film, Before I Go to Sleep, was adapted and directed by Rowan Joffe. It is an intermediate adaptation of the novel of the same name, written by S.J. Watson, and is not exactly or entirely like the text, but happens to stay somewhere in the middle. It stars Nicole Kidman as the main protagonist Christine Lucas, Colin Firth as the antagonist, her husband Ben Lucas, Mark Strong, as her Dr. Nasch, and Anne-Marie Duff, as Claire, Christine's friend. Ridley Scott purchased the rights to the book and acts as executive producer of the production.

The book is written in first person narrative with Christine Lucas telling her story from the beginning of the novel to the end. It is a very simple premise, and written extremely well where Christine does not remember anything concrete until the very startling ending of the story. The reader is presented with the protagonist waking every day not knowing where she is, suffering from anterograde amnesia. All of her memories appear to have disappeared through the night. Her husband, Ben, is also a stranger, and he has to explain every new day their life together. She has been in a mysterious accident causing Christine to have amnesia. Through the support of her doctor, she begins to keep a journal to hopefully help her to remember her life from one day to the next on a daily basis. She learns through this journal that the doctor is helping to recover her memory, that her name is actually Christine Lucas, she is 40-years old, married and has had a son. She reads her writings one morning and discovers three words: "Don't trust Ben" and she becomes very suspicion of him. She begins to wonder what kind of accident has caused her amnesia, who she can trust, and why Ben has been lying to her. The book offers more than basic questions about memory, identity and just who one can trust...anyone including one's self.

The film begins with Christine waking up in bed in a house she does not know and with a man that she doesn't know either. The man says that he is her husband Ben and that she has suffered a brain injury from a car accident more than ten years ago. She is now 40 years old, same as with the novel. A doctor at a local hospital is treating her, but unlike the novel, this doctor gives Christine a digital camera to document her thoughts every day, plus he calls her very morning to remind her where the camera is and to watch the video she has recorded. Her doctor, Nasch, then tells her to keep this camera hidden from her husband and also tells her when she lost her memory. It was not in a car accident as Ben has told her, but rather from a vicious attack where she was found almost dead near an airport hotel. Through her treatment, she starts to remember her friend Claire, who Ben reports could not handle her condition and stopped contacting her. Christine also learns that she had a son and while confronting Ben about hiding this fact from her, he says that the son died at age eight of meningitis.

With her memory beginning to resurface, she starts to remember the name Mike and believes it to be the name of the man who attacked her. She also learns that Ben had put her in an assisted living home and divorced her, then changed his mind, and took her home to live with him. Christine then learns that her friend Claire had been trying for some time to contact her, but did not know that Ben had taken Christine home to live with him. Christine discovers Claire phone number and meets her, where it is revealed that Christine had started an affair just before being attacked and that Ben and Claire had also had a sexual encounter and out of love for her, Claire decided to not contact her any longer.

Believing at this point that Ben really does love and care for her, she decides to show Ben the videos she has been recording. He then accuses her of having an affair with Dr. Nasch, hits her and then leaves. It is here in the film that Claire asks Christine to describe Ben and they both realize that this man is not Ben, but Mike, the man she was having the affair with and the man responsible for attacking her and leaving her to die outside the airport hotel. Of course, she awakens the following morning with no memories, no camera, and no telephone call from her doctor reminding her of the videos on the camera. Ben then takes her to the hotel and reveals to her that he is actually Mike and not Ben and tells her what transpired the night he attacked her and why. He deletes all the videos on her camera, tells her Adam, her son, is still alive and lastly, that he is no longer interested and playing the role of Ben. She escapes, but wakes up in a hospital and is visited by Dr. Nasch. She learns that Mike has been arrested; she is also visited by the real Ben, as well as her teenage son Adam, both of whom she now remembers.

As thrillers go, this was an easy one to figure out, even if I had not read the book. It was, however, acted well, particularly by Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth. I particularly liked the use of "eyes" especially whenever Christine woke up every morning, which metaphorically represented her search for her identity throughout the film. The problem I had with the film and with Ms. Kidman was not her acting...it was on point, but the plastic surgery she obviously has had. Apparently, she has had her nose and lips enhanced and her face was very distracting. At about halfway through the film, it seemed that the swelling went down, and her face appeared fairly normal. It was just awful! The dialog was also weak and need tweaking. Good camera work to show the expression of emotions the characters were sensing. Overall, this was a decent adaptation of the novel, but the storyline and plot could have also been edited better. GRADE: 2 of 5 crowns.