Review of Trance (2013) by Prodigy2013 — 02 Jul 2013

It’s always good to feast your eyes on a pulp inspired film every now and then; and while Danny Boyle’s ‘Trance’ is much thinner than his morehis more recent outings, it proves to be a trippy good time.

The movie stars James McAvoy, as a fine art auctioneer, who attempts to double-cross the thieves he partnered with in a heist, and pilfer the painting himself. However, after a blow to the head he forgets where he hid the painting and the band of thieves, lead by Vincent Cassel, are not very happy.

Twisty isn’t it? And like all good pieces of pulp entertainment, you need a sultry femme fatale to foil the plan of both our misguided hero and scheming villain. Enter Rosario Dawson as Elizabeth, the psychiatrist hired by Franck (Cassel) to probe Simon’s (McAvoy) mind through hypnosis, in order to find out where the painting is hidden.

Intriguing isn’t it!? While interesting, the plot was quite convoluted; and as the story progresses the water becomes murkier, making it difficult to distinguish hypnosis induced dreams from reality.

This was clearly an over indulgent move on the part of the writer, who attempts to add complexity to the puzzle but lost his way in the process. But thankfully he found his way eventually; and one could even argue that in the end everything adds up, even if it was all a bit of a stretch.

And as I implied earlier, all this adds a nice dose of intrigue to the plot. Boyle’s direction is stylish as usual, and complements must be given to the dreamy cinematography and most of all, the edgy film editing.

Jon Harris’ editing job was incredibly complex, as it was cool. ‘Trance’ may not be a particularly memorable film, but it worked for me. The positives outweighed the negatives (if even slightly so), and I enjoyed every minute of it.