Forget Me Not

This is a 2010 British film staring Tobias Menzies and Genevieve O'Reilly. Wow! This is a slow lead up to a catastrophic ending. Surprising. Deep as the sea. Two people sharing a diminishing memory. One is her mother. The other is Menzies. Menzies is a top actor. O'Reilly is a top actor. Gemma Jones is tops. The editing is tops. The score is deliberately off beat. The location is London through the night until day break. 24 hours and these two do know each other. This is an unusual film with haunting ideas about our memory and our identity. Mark Underwood wrote the screenplay. Excellent and unforgettable.

This film has a lot of potential. The cast, particularly the two leads, are great. The premise - two strangers meet and spend one long night falling in love - is perhaps a little predictable, but still holds charm. The setting - London city at night - is picturesque. However, the script fails to deliver and our two star-crossed lovers spend far too much of the film skimming the surface of well-worn conversation topics, trapped in cliché scenarios.

Lingering looks? Check. Conversations about God and the meaning of life? Check. Rain-soaked embraces? Check. Guy giving up his jacket? You bet. Bittersweet ending? Of course. Piano playing, swapping of embarrassing childhood stories, walks along rivers, revelations of painful pasts, spontaneous musical interludes - this film has it all.

That's not to say the film doesn't have its charms. There are some interesting twists in the conversation, and there are moments towards the end where the characters manage to break free, however temporarily, from their cookie-cut roles of Tortured Artist and Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The problem is that the formula has been done so often, and so much better. See: Before Sunrise (1995), Once (2006), Breakfast Club (1985). This film is by no means terrible, but with so many other good films available to watch, why waste your time?

I enjoyed this film a lot, it was more than I was expecting. It's not your standard romantic drama, and it's clear that there was no big budget or fanfare with this - but that's why I liked it. It meant that there was no distraction from the two main characters in the film and I could concentrate on their stories. Tobias Menzies plays his character with an understated confidence, he allows you to understand him and his ways in your own time. Genevieve O'Reilly is also good and plays a very likable character. There's a chapter of her story, involving her grandmother, which felt a little 'shoe-horned' in, and there may have been another way of introducing the subject of memory to the film in a less contrived way. I never saw the end coming (the two have a conversation at the end in which all is revealed), and the final scenes were really good - although nobody warned me this film was a weepy! All in all, a good film and I'm pleased to have watched it.

Yeah, this film is amazing. The most underrated romantic drama of all time.

It's curiously a strange cousin to Lost in Translation.

Beautifully shot in London at some great locations. Cinematography is top notch.

Brilliantly acted. Just so gorgeous to look at. It deserves to be on Blu-ray. I would buy it to replace my worn out dvd.

Lovely London, great acting, great story.

Blah blah blah, why do we need to use 600 letters to explain how good a movie is.

It's really good, really great, really excellent.

Before Sunrise and Lost in Translation, yeah yeah yeah. It's just as good, so great.

London never looked so good.

I really love it, oh yeah!....

A romantic drama by Alexander Holt, "Forget Me Not" stars Tobias Menzies and Genevieve O'Really as a couple who spend several hours roaming the streets of London. They chat, laugh, gaze longingly into each other's eyes and then, finally, share shocking secrets.

Wholly clichéd, "Forget Me Not" plays like an amalgamation of "Remember Sunday", "Away From Her", "50 First Dates", "Memento", "Once" and Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise". Elsewhere Holt's attempts at photographing London are mostly inept, the director ignoring London's more interesting nooks and crannies in favour for unimaginative locations deemed "romantic" and "iconic" by tasteless tourist agencies.

5/10 – Worth one viewing.