BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP

Il regista, sceneggiatore e produttore britannico Rowan Joffè (Brighton Rock, 2010) figlio d’arte - il padre è Roland Joffè e la madre l’attrice Jane Lapotaire - ha potuto disporre di un forte ancoraggio: narrativo come tali sono le pagine dell’omonimo romanzo da cui è tratto il film Before I Go To Sleep (in Italia Non ti addormentare) di S. J. Watson; e attoriale, con Nicole Kidman e Colin Firth primi protagonisti. Curioso che i due interpreti facciano ancora coppia in celluloide nello stesso anno, anche ne Le due vite del destino-The Railway Man (2014) di Jonathan Teplitzky. Ma è lei, Nicole Kidman, con la sua Christine in Before I Go To Sleep, ad irradiare il campo con i suoi controluce interiori, in una storia dominata dall’amnesia anterograda derivata da un trauma, così come da un reticolo di menzogne, alla stregua di una micidiale tela di ragno pseudo-familiare. L’ambientazione casalinga

minimalista nella periferia di Londra, freddamente estraniante - scelta per enfatizzare la stessa estraniazione percepita da Christine/Kidman - e la spasmodica ricerca quotidiana della sua verità, frugando disperatamente tra le nebbie del non ricordo, attivano un contorcersi della trama in direzioni talora opposte. Quanto basta a farne un thriller alla Hitchcock, pur non riuscendo a dipingerne le cangianti sfumature con lo stesso smalto.

L’occhio sgranato di Christine/Kidman al risveglio mattutino con un uomo accanto che non riconosce - il Ben di Colin Firth - avvia la danza ansiogena di chi non sa più nulla di sé, fatta eccezione per i vent’anni che precedono l’incidente. E’ il marito Ben/Firth a spiegarle ogni mattina, con un genere di affetto rigido, fondamentalmente distante ed ambiguo, che soffre di amnesia anterograda a causa di un incidente, patologia che impedisce la formazione di nuovi ricordi. Così ogni giorno Christine/Kidman si sveglia per conoscere Ben/Firth: qualsiasi nuova

informazione raccolga durante il giorno viene cancellata al mattino, quando la sua memoria si ripristina a uno stato di 20 anni. Quello che Ben non sa, tuttavia, è che Christine ha tenuto un diario-video per volere del suo psicologo, il dottor Nash (Mark Strong), un dispositivo che le permette una parvenza di memoria cumulativa. Ed è questa la parte più interessante per lo spettatore, che ha così l’occasione di ascoltare e vedere queste registrazioni in diretta, in linea con la soggettiva della protagonista, come frammenti di cinema nel cinema. E di citazione nella citazione: la particolare ripresa del corridoio dell’hotel, ad esempio, ammicca al sensore sinistro dell’aggressione consumata, almeno in parte, proprio lì, ma soprattutto, alla nobile fonte di riferimento, che fa capo al cult horror Shining di Stanley Kubrick, passando fugacemente per Eyes Wide Shut, con il nudo integrale da tergo della Kidman in bagno. Horror in gocce dunque,

perché, di fatto, in Before I Go to Sleep Joffé preferisce seguire per lo più le orme del thriller psicogeno, alcova dove ritorcere e accartocciare più volte a piacimento i vari nodi narrativi, per far provare allo spettatore lo stesso senso di smarrimento ed estraniazione della protagonista.

E’ dunque Nash/Strong a chiamare ogni giorno Christine/Kidman per ricordarle l'esistenza del video-diario: la chiave per mettere insieme frammenti della sua storia personale che Ben/Firth - a suo dire per il benessere mentale di lei - le ha tenuto nascosto. E questo vale per molte foto ritratto, per la sua migliore amica, Claire (Anne-Marie Duff), e, soprattutto, per suo figlio Adam, secondo la versione di Ben/Firth, morto a causa di una meningite letale, occorsa qualche tempo dopo il suo incidente. Per Christine/Kidman resta dunque il video-diario la sua guida elettiva, l’aiuto-memoire in espansione, attraverso il quale avvicinarsi sempre più alla radice del suo trauma:

le frequenti, fugaci e frammentarie, schegge di memoria, rigurgitate qua e là, sono celebrate da una fotografia sgranata ben distinta da quella corrente per tutto il film. Un passo avanti e due indietro, in un inanellarsi di battute e controbattute, per una realtà che affiora sempre più distorta, e da cui sembra quasi impossibile poter arrivare a vedere la luce in fondo al tunnel. Occorrerà raggiungere un punto di rottura per poter sbrogliare la matassa, e non sarà indolore, come ben sa chi ha letto il romanzo da cui è tratto il film. Romanzo che Joffé non ha evidentemente mai pensato di tradire, pur non raggiungendo analoga potenza.

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NICOLE KIDMAN AND COLIN FIRTH PLAY SUB-HITCHCOCKIAN GAMES IN THIS DIVERTING BUT DOPEY ADAPTATION OF S.J. WATSON'S BESTSELLER.

“Before I Go To Sleep” is a risky title for a genre exercise intended to keep viewers bolt upright in their seats, handing mirthful critics a ready-made punchline at the first sign of lethargy. The good news is that Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s 2011 publishing phenom is far from a snooze; the bad news is that it’s the film’s escalating, po-faced ludicrousness that holds our attention. Starring a typically hard-working Nicole Kidman as a short-term amnesiac unsure whether she’s being played by her husband, her shrink or both, the film’s wildly contrived premise could be more pithily described as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 50 First Dates.” With David Fincher’s similarly targeted “Gone Girl” already siphoning its buzz, this dopey diversion will need the novel’s fans to turn out en masse to

avoid being forgotten by morning.

A planned Halloween release Stateside — weeks after the film’s Sept. 5 release in Blighty and elsewhere — might lead auds to expect an out-and-out frightfest, but for the bulk of its running time, “Before I Go To Sleep” is more of a psychological puzzle picture, reserving the would-be white-knuckle stuff for its final few reels. If it still fails to stir up too many screams, that could be because the narrative’s complex network of holes is so apparent by that point that any real sense of peril is hard to sustain — despite the quivery efforts of Kidman, an actress who has long done hunted fragility better than just about anyone in the business. Having already impersonated Grace Kelly in one bad film this year, she has a second bite at the cherry here: Her vulnerable, terminally addled but resourceful heroine Christine Lucas is essentially

a terrorized Hitchcock blonde in more sensible shoes.

There’s a Cary Grant substitute, too, in Colin Firth’s stiffly affectionate, not entirely forthcoming husband figure Ben, on whose dulcet tones it falls to provide much of the initial exposition. Christine, it turns out, has suffered from anterograde amnesia — that condition, long beloved of screenwriters, that prevents the formation of new memories — ever since nearly losing her life in a horrific attack several years prior. Every day, she wakes to become freshly acquainted with Ben and the moneyed, minimalist house they share in outer suburban London; whatever new information she gleans during the day is wiped clean by morning, as her memory resets to a 20-year-old state.

What Ben doesn’t know, however, is that Christine has been keeping a video diary at the behest of her psychologist, Dr. Nash (Mark Strong), a device that allows her some semblance of cumulative memory —

a higher-tech equivalent of the similarly debilitated Guy Pearce’s Polaroid-and-tattoo method in “Memento.” “Sleep” opens with her recording a particularly panicked bedtime entry before skipping back, as is de rigueur in mainstream thrillers these days, to the recent past. Nash calls Christine on a daily basis to reintroduce himself and remind her of the diary’s existence. In this way, she pieces together fragments of her personal history that Ben, supposedly out of concern for her mental well-being, has kept from her — notably her estranged best friend, Claire (Anne-Marie Duff), and, crucially, her departed son Adam, whom Ben claims was lost to leukemia some time after her accident.

With the help of this expanding aide-memoire, Christine inches toward the root of her trauma; furthermore, at a sort of one-step-forward-two-steps-back pace, she begins to realize that her domestic life is not what it appears to be. To unpick the numerous lapses in

logic and credibility that keep this plot suspended — most of them, to be fair, inherited from the source novel, from which Joffe’s screenplay makes few drastic deviations — would be to enter severe spoiler territory. It is fair, however, to note that the film never answers the question of how Nash, without the knowledge or consent of the keenly protective Ben, came to treat Christine in the first place.

That’s a gap from which a torrent of other head-scratching uncertainties spill, while the unorthodox nature of their therapy sessions keep in play the possibility that Nash, rather than Ben, might be the one concealing critical secrets from our heroine. (Why do they keep rendezvousing in desolate parking lots, if not simply to honor sacred thriller tradition?) The film’s interest in, or understanding of, Christine’s fascinating condition is limited even by the superficial standards of mainstream movie psychology: Beyond the pinched,

nervy undertow of psychic pain in Kidman’s performance, it’s treated as little more than a convenient quirk to get the film’s motor running. Nash, for his part, tosses around elementary terms like “transference” with scholarly gravitas. Between her husband and her doctor, Christine has to deal with so much measured mansplaining on a daily basis, it’s a wonder she doesn’t use her camcorder to bat both of them around the skull.

Wittier filmmakers have managed to sell audiences on even sillier plots than this one, but Joffe, a proficient stylist who previously flailed with a loftier literary source in 2010’s disastrous “Brighton Rock” update, takes the material entirely at face value — and a stonily serious face it is, too. There’s perilously little playfulness to be found either in the script or its otherwise handsomely ashen cinematic treatment; even Melanie Ann Oliver’s efficient but staid editing makes little attempt to put

viewers in the protagonist’s mind or creatively mirror her cyclical confusion. Top marks among the below-the-line team go to production designer Kave Quinn, whose chic but alienating appointment of Christine’s surroundings (all slate-hued walls and skeletal Scandinavian furniture) convincingly creates the sense of a home that, both physically and psychologically, has never quite been her own.

Performance-wise, the film is constructed as “The Kidman Show,” though the star’s deliberate turn isn’t always in sync with the more histrionic demands of the filmmaking or Edward Shearmur’s jumpy score. Strong offers a warmly neutral bedside manner, while Firth seems detached beyond the remit of his inscrutable role. With “Sleep” coming mere months after his and Kidman’s more attentive collaboration in “The Railway Man,” in which Firth’s character was the one with psychological demons to exorcise, these well-matched co-stars have surely earned the right to have a little more fun together — or, failing

that, at least a good restorative nap.