I hadn’t heard much about this film before I saw it.  Just a tidbit here and there from various fests, but nothing that stuck in my head.  Which is apt, considering Trance is a tale about the twisty-turney ways our minds can play tricks on us, and how easy it can be to manipulate what’s in your head.  Or what you think is in your head.

Simon (James McAvoy, X Men: First Class) is a high-class auctioneer.  His job — outside of trying to sell really, really expensive stuff — is to make sure that the most expensive item on offer during an auction gets dropped off into safe storage if there’s ever a robbery attempt.  The number one rule?  “No painting is worth a human life.  Don’t be a hero.”  So when suave art thief Franck (Vincent Cassel, Black Swan) comes for an extremely expensive Goya, what does Simon do?  Yeah, you guessed it.

Simon gets a severe bang on the noggin for his trouble, and he goes to hypnotherapist Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson, Rent) but that’s only the start of this story.  To discuss more would ruin the crazy Inception-meets-Memento storyline.  Who’s really the bad guy, why are characters doing what they’re doing, and are they in fact even doing them; that’s the meat of this tale.  Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) gets off to a choppy start — it’s hard at the beginning to continue caring about what’s going on when the story begins to shivers and spiral — but it pays off at the end.  Remember when M. Night Shamalan was fantastic?  Trance harkens back to the payoff of Unbreakable.  No superheroes here; McAvoy doesn’t turn into Professor X (though that’d be awesome).  But that same sense of wonder and pleasure at being let in on the final secret rings true here.

 

The problem, however, is that there’s a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, but very little digging into the heart of the characters.  With a film that focuses almost entirely on three characters, that’s a problem.  I assume that Boyle wanted to leave us without a sense of who the audience should root for, and who to revile.  A movie that lets you come to your own conclusions can be wonderful.  But with all these twists and turns in Trance, it’s difficult to stop and figure out if you’re supposed to care.  As Elizabeth, Dawson gets the most compelling backstory, and as Boyle’s pieces start to fit into place at the end of the film I did find myself satisfied with how things worked themselves out.  Nonetheless, with the focus on hypnosis, mind games and amnesia there were so many points in the film that seemed to be one thing but ended up something else.  Too many.  I expected Freddy Kreuger to pop up and welcome us to dreamland hell.  We were probably only a block or two away, on the left.

Trance is brilliant, there’s no doubt.  How Boyle and screenwriters Joe Ahearne (Ultraviolet) and John Hodge (Trainspotting) fit this story together is truly an accomplishment.  But is it watchable?  Yes, if you invest in the ride in order to enjoy the payoff.  Things come together at the end in a time-blender of a climax that had me wanting to re-watch the film, like I did with The Sixth Sense.  But although Trance has some bloody FX in a few scenes, there’s no little kid seeing dead people.  Though I’d bet if you gave Boyle half a chance, he’d be able to work that in as well.