Trance, 2013, Pathé International, Film Four, directed by Danny Boyle. Starring James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel, Rosario Dawson.
One thing that must be said before anyone can start talking about Danny Boyle is that he's already made the perfect film. It was a shocking, funny, an emotional rollercoster of high imagination which showed an intelligence and cinematic awareness that just can't be beaten. I am, of course, talking about the Mr. Bean skit from the London 2012 Opening Ceremony (and I guess Trainspotting's pretty decent too). He's still at the top of his game is our Danny, but what happens when you've already reached perfection?
Boyle's got an electic CV, so it should come as no surprise that the film he releases after the glorious madness of the Olympics and the West End version of Frankenstein is an artsy, time warping, shady little slither of a film which unfortunately doesn't really live up to it's potential. It's not that Trance is bad, it's just that... well, you remember when your teacher told you that they weren't angry with you, they were just disappointed? That sort of sums up my feelings about Trance really. Oh and just so you know, there are going to be minor spoilers, so if you want to see it unsullied, please stop reading now. Cheers.
Still here? Right, first thing first, I like the beginning. James McAvoy's Simon monologuing about the art heists of old was really cool, and I enjoyed the set up and the enevitability of Simon being the inside man of the heist. Actually, there's a lot about Trance that plays with the conventions of Hollywood heist films, pointing them out and finding them rediculous without actually losing any respect for them. So of course the three henchmen are interchangable - they're henchmen! And of course Franck (Vincent Cassel) is foreign - he's a master thief, so he's got to be French and sexy! This I liked, because it was fun and this is a film that should be fun.
The set up of the story is that Simon, an art autioner, bungles the heist of a Goya masterwork. He hits his head and forgets exactly where he put the painting that's now worth £27 million, and the rest of the film is spent trying to find out where it is. There's a hypnotherapist played by Rosario Dawson as well, and that's really all that can be actually said confidently about what the hell is actually going on in this film. I struggled with the constantly jumping narrative, the ever-changing perspective and the seemingly endless chronological shifts that I felt like grabbing the film by the shoulders and slapping it to cure it's hysteria. It's cool to play with narrative, but Trance was leaping around for too long before it actually tried to answer any of its questions, by which point I was bored and annoyed.
Actually, I wasn't bored, because I was wondering when Danny Boyle decided that all women are good for is sex and treachary. I like Boyle a lot, and I like his female characters as well (Naomi Harris in 28 Days Later for example) but man, he dropped the ball with this one. Dawson's Elizabeth Lamb gets attacked three times by three different guys in the film - three! And the first two make sure to break into her house first and then start assaulting her, but wait! It's not actually attempted rape, it turns out she's into it. Mint. Yeah I know she's supposed to be a femme fatale and it's supposed to be a sly nod at the rediculousness of that archetype, but where the interchangable henchmen worked, having Elizabeth be beaten black and blue, broken into and nearly raped doesn't. By taking the archetype, stripping it of all the sexy power it has, Elizabeth becomes a cowering wreck, only really finding her power again the end, which is unfortunately a little too late.
Elizabeth isn't the only lady in the film either; Tuppence Middleton plays a nameless lady who is a major part of the film and is promptly forgotten about until the end when... yeah, she's promptly forgotten about again. This isn't just irritating because I like Tuppence Middleton and she's a really good actor, but because of the mantra of the film - 'No piece of art is worth a human life'. Middleton is so absolutely tied up in that message, but nothing is said about it, nothing is really done about it and nobody mentions her again. It's a waste of a role, it could have provided a pivotal moment and it was ignored for... well, nothing really.
This means that for all it's twists and turns, Trance is an ultimately unsatisfying film. It's gorgeous to look at and it seems very clever-clever at first, but once you've swilled it around for a bit it does leave a bit of a nasty taste which was never there with Boyle's other films. Still, he said that the film was just a creative release after the endless meetings of the Olympics, so chances are he went a little overboard with the twists and turns because nobody wanted to have a meeting with him about them first. The next one he's doing is the Trainspotting sequel which should be awesome - it's just a shame that Trance wasn't.
