Avant d'aller dormir

Overview: Clever, emotional, Kidman in her 40's is a totally different actress (hopefully she'll get a role that will become a classic).

If you've seen 50 First Dates and Momento then you will have this movie pretty much figured out in the first 15 minutes or so. However that said it still manages to leave you just as uncertain about what's going on along with Kidman's character until the reveal. Careful observation will give you the clues though. The plot is clever and as you'd expect Colin Firth acts superbly and Mark Strong is also very good as the Doctor. As for Nicole Kidman I must confess age has done her wonders, gone is that teenage look that may have prevented here being taken seriously for "heavy" parts. The Others was a bit wooden (although the character did require that in fairness), Australia would have benefited from Nicole's more mature look. She is excellent, pulling you in to her confusion and roller coaster of emotions she goes through with each day and set of new facts she finds out. I really enjoyed this movie and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes a clever thriller without the pointless need for tons of special effects.

DON'T read spoilers, they really will ruin the film for you.

Literally messing with your head, Nicole Kidman plays a woman who suffered Trauma to the head that makes her forget the past 15 years of her life when she falls asleep. She wakes up next to her husband, a man she does not know unforgettably played by Colin Firth, and as her doctor played by Mark Strong begins to help her deal with the illness things about her past begin to burst out like a kid taking out puzzle pieces and some how she has to put this puzzle together, even though when she wakes in the morning, the puzzle's messed up again. It's a strange mystery watching the protagonist solve the mystery that is her life. The whole thing would have come off one dimensional if it were not for Colin Firth's part as the emotionally distress husband who loves his wife but wants somethings to stay lost in her memory. It was an enjoyable ride watching the mystery unfold, definitely glad I saw it.

I'd actually read the book before seeing this film so it was a question to ask ourselves: can we be bothered? In the event, it was worth it and I found that I was submerged in the film during the showing.

It's the sort of film that doesn't get made very much now in these days of big budgets, explosions, and cartoonish characterisations. But I'm glad it appears on the big rather than the small screen of TV because they brought in really good actors in the three leads. Particularly in the case of Nicole Kidman, she downplays her looks to come across as an ordinary woman approaching middle age, a brave choice for an actress.

The big surprise to me was Colin Firth who is way outside his normal range here and completely credible in the role. Mark Strong also is good in portraying a psychiatrist with empathy.

The film is very sombre but this is appropriate for the subject matter and really the director and cinematographer deserve a lot of credit for catching the uneasy tone of the book.

The reason I don't give it a rating higher than 7 is the unnecessary slasher scenes which could I think could have been done without so much blood and violence. Modern filmmakers should pay more attention to the work of someone like Hitchcock who suggested the gore rather than shoved your face in it. Still a mature film well worth seeing.

"Before I Go To Sleep" is an effective psychological thriller.

Nicole Kidman plays Christine Lucas, someone who if she saw "50 First Dates" wouldn't remember it the morning afterwards! She wakes as a forty-something 'housewife' in her suburban home every morning with Ben (Colin Firth) in bed next to her. However, she can remember little to nothing of the last twenty years.

She is being covertly helped on a pro-bono basis (with a trace of pro-boner thrown in) by UCL neuro-scientist Dr Nash (Mark Strong). Nash reveals that she ended up in this state after being severely beaten up and left for dead near a Heathrow hotel. He persuades her to maintain a video diary of the days' events and recollections, but he has to remind her where she's hidden the camera via phone every morning.

But Christine has a traumatic and terrifying past, remembered (and then immediately forgotten) in dreams, but which only very slowly starts to piece itself together during the waking hours. One character emerging from the mental mist is a long-time college friend Claire (James McAvoy's wife Anne-Marie Duff) who disappeared from her life under mysterious circumstances but is now 'found' again.

Will Christine piece together the jigsaw? What was she doing in the Heathrow hotel? Who beat her up and why? Where does Claire fit in? Can Mark Strong play anything other than a 'baddie'? So many questions, so little memory.

Produced by Ridley Scott and with Rowan Joffe ("28 Weeks Later") writing the screenplay and directing, the film is pleasingly set in and around a non-touristy London with some fine scenic shots - you can't really beat the view from the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and this nicely features in one scene. Nicole Kidman has a lot of acting to do in this role and she does it very well. Firth and Strong - two of my favourite actors - are both excellent and keep you guessing throughout. But of all of the acting roles I found Anne-Marie Duff particularly effective in the short-and-sweet role of Claire: a very powerful and touching performance.

It is tempting to describe any psycho-thriller as 'Hitchcockian', but there are moments where this film can certainly be tagged in this way. This is helped by a Bernard Herrmann-like score by Ed Shearmur, moody photography by Ben Davis and crisp editing by Melanie Oliver.

I enjoyed this film, but even with all of these positives it still felt more like a B-movie than an A-movie for reasons I can't quite sum up. In addition there were a few niggling plot points and, in my opinion, a slightly weak epilogue ending. Also note that, in a world where far too many women still face physical violence, there are flashback scenes in this film that some may find distressing, earning it its '15' UK certificate.

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In 1995, there was a movie called "While You Were Sleeping", a romantic vehicle for Sandra Bullock, but this 2014 similarly-titled work is very different: a thriller with Nicole Kidman in the central role as Christine, a woman who suffered a serious assault years ago and now forgets everything each time she sleeps. Two men are trying to help her, husband Ben (Colin Firth) and therapist Dr Nash (Mark Strong). Like most standard thrillers, we find that our assessments of the principals swing back and forth before 'the big reveal'.

There is a sub-genre of movies involving limited memory - think "Blink", "The Bourne Identity" or "50 First Dates" to name just a few - and "Before I Go To Sleep" is not the best of them (that would be "Memento") but, if one does not think too much about the implausible narrative, this is entertaining enough, helped by good source material (the best-selling novel by S J Watson) and the solid acting (Kidman with a good English accent, Firth not as straighforwardly charming as he is usually, Strong not as as unremittingly threatening as he is so often).