Movie reviews: Trance

This week's pick of the flicks.

Art gallery employee Simon (James McEvoy) is the inside man when a gang led by Franck (Vincent Cassel) steals a rare painting. The meticulously planned robbery goes wrong from the very start, however. Not only does Simon double-cross Franck and hide the stolen painting, he gets a whack on his head that leaves him with amnesia. Can hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) help Simon to remember where he has hidden the painting? Director Danny Boyle’s latest film, Trance (16s), is on one level an old-fashioned heist-gone-wrong flick. On another level, however, as Elizabeth helps Simon remember who he is and what he does, it’s a fascinating investigation into the nature of identity, and the extent to which memory shapes our personalities. Simultaneously a pacy, thought-provoking tale, the blend of fast-paced thriller and the more cerebral exploration of the mind’s complexities doesn’t quite gel, particularly as some of the characters are required to embody radically different characteristics as the tone shifts back and forth. Dawson turns in an excellent performance as a kind of Scheherazade figure, spinning story upon story to the increasingly desperate criminals as she seeks to capitalise on her position of power. McEvoy is good too, especially as the audience is never entirely sure if Simon is genuinely amnesiac or simply shamming in order to con his tormentors. Unfortunately, Cassel is less convincing as the boss.

Good Vibrations (15A) is a biopic-of-sorts of ‘the Godfather of Belfast Punk’, aka Terri Hooley (Richard Dormer), the man who revolutionised the music scene in Belfast during the 1970s. Set against the backdrop of the Troubles, and featuring snippets of grainy newsreel footage of those bleak times, the film posits the theory that Hooley’s enthusiasm for three chords and the truth represented a kind of ‘soft’ revolution, as kids from both communities came together in a non- sectarian atmosphere to pogo along to the likes of the Outcasts, the Undertones, et al. In a telling scene, Hooley ventures to London to plug his latest record, only for a company executive to reject it on the basis that the lyrics lacked the bombs, bullets and mayhem of the Troubles. This, of course, was the whole point of the Good Vibrations label, which was only one element of a loose collective geared towards normalising the experience of growing up in what amounted to a war zone. It’s a powerful, upbeat and largely optimistic tale that benefits hugely from excellent performances from Dormer and Jodie Whittaker, the latter in the role of Hooley’s long-suffering wife, Ruth, who represents the unwelcome intrusion of reality into Hooley’s vision of Belfast as a punk nirvana. The film doesn’t shy away from depicting the extent to which Hooley’s labour of love was domestically chaotic and personally destructive. A bitter- sweet tale lovingly told, it’s a fitting tribute — as is the pulsating soundtrack — to one man’s enduring dream.