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Movie review: 'Trance' is a chronicle of crime and amnesia
You’ve probably heard of the “bare all” scenes here. So let’s get it out of the way.
Anyone with a thing for Rosario Dawson should go check this movie out. Sure there’s much baring of her lady parts (oh, yes, I kid you not) but, seriously, she mustered up all her thespian craft here for a bravura performance that’ll surprise and erase her heyday as the object of affection in “MIB” or “Clerks2,” and takes a deft turn from her vicious role in “Sin City.” This is so much bigger than just seeing celebrity skin, though, as nice (or very nice) as that may be.
“Trance” is about sleight-of-hand and unexpected revelations you’ve kept from yourself. It spins on the axis of amnesia and frolics in the garden of memory.
Why do we forget or choose to forget some things? A philosophical question like this is usually the fare of art house flicks. You know those movies that go hand in hand with long scenes where absolutely NOTHING happens and people smoke a lot in the streets.
It’s a mystery; what we remember and don’t. Fortunately for us, this is also an art heist film, which makes it a crime caper by definition. And nobody does extreme human and criminal behavior quite like British auteur Danny Boyle, aka the same guy behind “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Trainspotting.”
Also, this thing has also got more twists in it than a pack of pretzels. Meaning, it’ll be nearly impossible to do a decent review without giving away plot points. And spoilers will completely ruin this astounding, intense, mindjack experience into the head of Simon (James McAvoy). 
James McAvoy as Simon, a fine art auctioneer who's suffered head trauma and has forgotten where he left a stolen Goya painting.
If I was doubtful about curbing my enthusiasm and throwing caution to the wind, the studio notes came with this message at the start: [WE] RESPECTFULLY REQUEST ALL WRITERS AND BROADCASTERS TO BE ESPECIALLY MINDFUL OF PLOT SPOILERS.
I’d usually say, screw that, but this time I agree.
So, let me simply set the table and point out a few notable things to think about post-screening before I urge you to see this interlaced Ouroboros monster:
“Trance” begins with Simon (James McAvoy), a fine art auctioneer, and the inside man for a criminal gang who’s in the process of stealing Goya’s “Witches in the Air,” a painting worth millions of dollars in the black market, from the auction house where he works.
Everything’s going well until Simon decides to pay back a grudge and jab Franck (Vincent Cassel), the gang leader, with an electric stick. Franck doesn’t like that one bit so he gives Simon a love smack with the butt of a shotgun. Simon wakes up to discover that, after suffering the blow to the head, he has no memory of where he hid the painting. 
Vincent Cassel plays Franck, the leader of the art heist gang.
Problem: more blows to the head won’t help him remember and old school Kubark manual-style torture doesn’t help either.
Franck is out of ideas and desperate so he hires hypnotherapist Elizabeth Lamb (Rosario Dawson) to scrounge around inside the damaged head of Simon to see if she can get him to remember where he put the darned Goya.
As Dr. Lamb begins to unravel Simon’s broken subconscious, the crime gets more complicated, a love triangle forms, and the Goya is eventually found after many deaths.
The premise of the art heist is just a jump point, mind. This movie is fathoms deep. Almost as deep as memory and forgetting. Sounds like obfuscation? You’ll understand what I’m saying when the second twist is revealed, the one where a lot of buzzing through the closed glass panel of a bathroom is heard.
While the gratuity of Dawson’s body is made a metaphor for the changing tastes of the female form depicted in art—and ye olde fashion for depilation —what sticks in your head is how much range and subdued power she brings to the role of Dr. Lamb.
As both victim and headshrinker with a bent for mesmerism, we eventually get to know her as a tactical general who favors mental jiu-jitsu; executing neural americanas and kimuras in pro fashion while a patient is under the trance state. From there she’s able to implant suggestions that can either heal or harm. Her bread and butter, she confesses, are people with eating disorders and smoking habits. 
Rosario Dawson as Dr. Elizabeth Lamb, headshrinker and hypnotist extraordinaire.
There’s an undercurrent of commentary here about how hypnotism can be used as a tool. The recovery of a lost memory isn’t outside this field, but it does stretch its credulity somewhat. There’s a pitfall there, too: it can easily slide into the deep waters of occultism and before you know it we’re in a horror movie. Under Boyle’s strong directorial hand we’re having none of that, luckily.
When you get to it, the romance and the sex serves to balance the very cerebral nature of the film that just falls short of “Inception” or “Matrix” levels but packs a brutishness courtesy of Boyle style of pacing, execution, and suspense work.
That is, while you’re still trying to wrap your head around a plot revelation, the story comes in and wallops you with another. I remember reading a novel whose author’s trademark was to introduce a plot change every 700 words. This movie doesn’t have that fast of a juggernaut pace since it’s slowed down just enough to get us comfortable and relaxed. This Russian doll strategy of narrative where twists just keep on coming is sheer directorial sorcery.
Danny Boyle, you, sir, are the man. And I mean it. Philip K. Dick, a benchmark in amnesia literature, would be proud.
It’s like watching a flow of subtle homage, sometimes. Dick: How can Doug Quaid be sure he hasn’t gone to Mars? Boyle: How can Simon be sure he hasn’t already pulled this heist before? Dick: How can the pre-cog Amanda be sure this isn’t the future? How can Simon be sure he hasn’t loved this girl before and simply forgotten about her?
Let us also give props to screenwriters Joe Ahearne and John Hodge, who showed remarkable restraint with the story tempo. Often, it’s little understood that what you hold back is as important as what you reveal but they drive home that point to the gills here.
My one nitpick here is the ubiquitous, sometimes blasting electronica. Somebody just got a little too much MDMA hangover, but never mind that.
If you’re hankering for more than respite from the heat and are in the mood for a delightful, joyous messing with your head, then I implore you to see “Trance.”
Trust me, the 101 minutes of running time will fly by quickly. And you’ll want more when the credits roll like the passing glimpse of a beautiful girl— that seems so oddly familiar it’s almost déjà vu—whom you think could easily love if you could only see her again. But how can you be sure you haven’t already? —KG, GMA News
Photos courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures
“Trance” opens in all major Manila theaters on May 1.
Karl R. De Mesa is the author of the books “News of the Shaman” (also available in ebook format at Amazon, B&N, and iTunes) and “Report from the Abyss”, a collection of non-fiction. The opinions expressed here are solely his own.
