Trance Film Review

After orchestrating the sublime and memorable opening to the London Olympic Games, Director Danny Boyle returns to familiar film making territory with his new hypnotic movie Trance. 

Unlike London in the Olympic Games, Boyle’s new offering represents the capital in a dream like noir state, filmed through a trippy, spirally almost subconscious lens.

On the surface this film could be categorized as a heist movie, but its undertones reflect a world where truth and lies meander together and where secrets and suggestions are the real scenes of the crime.

The movie begins with an art auctioneer named Simon (James McAvoy), who decides to steal a 25 million pound Goya painting from the confines of his own auction house. On the verge of success, Simon runs into ruthless gangster Frank (Vincent Cassel), who promptly whacks the cunning assailant out cold. In this apparent random altercation, it is soon revealed that both Simon and Frank are in cahoots together on the job.  After waking from the blow to the head, Simon has seemingly forgotten where he has stored the painting, which leaves French Frank with a real mind-bending conundrum. This leads to the introduction of Elizabeth, a hypnotherapist whose job it is to jog the memory of the art stealing amnesiac.

It is from this moment on that Danny Boyle produces a juxtaposing world of both reality and fantasy, as Elizabeth’s neurological methods delve deep into the dark cortex of Simon’s inner thoughts and secrets.

The trio of actors at the helm of the film all put in strong performances, especially Cassel, whose dark menace filters onto the frame every time he enters into a scene.

As for the plot, much of it can be attributed and echoed in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster hit Inception, with both films sharing an inability to stay static in their leaping back and forth narrative structures.

Despite the complex plot, Boyle has kept things grounded behind the scenes; enlisting the collaboration of old cohorts in producing partners Christian Colson and DP Anthony Dod Mantle, as well as his early go-to screenwriter, John Hodge.

The third act is an absorbing spectacle of cinema delight, with Boyle showing his visual eye for dazzling the audience. John Hodge too does a credible job of bringing together a script littered with untrustworthy recollections tainted with twists and turns. 

This may not go down in the same stature as Trainspotting or Slumdog Millionaire, but Boyle has proven yet again that he is a director who can tackle any genre put in front of him.

Overall, Trance is what the Thomas Crown Affair would have looked like on LSD.