Reminiscence (2021) has the necessary elements for an outstanding neo-noir film: a cynical hard-bitten amateur sleuth, an enigmatic femme fatale with a checkered past, corruption, betrayal, artifice, moral ambiguity, a tangled plot, and intriguing characters with closets filled with skeletons. Performances are excellent, particularly by Hugh Jackman (Nick), Rebecca Ferguson (Mae), Cliff Curtis (Booth) and Daniel Wu (Saint Joe). The plot is satisfyingly convoluted. Production values are outstanding. Yet, the film can't seem to maintain focus.
As has become endemic recently, woke filmmakers seem unable to resist the temptation to put their audiences asleep with sophomoric political commentary and allusions. The film is set in a dystopian near future recoiling from "the Border Wars" and flooding caused by climate change. As the current villains du jour are the Chinese, the chief villain is played by Daniel Wu, better known as a Hong Kong megastar. The cast is an international potpourri of talented performers, including Australian Hugh Jackman, Swedish Rebecca Ferguson, British Thandiwe Newton, New Zealander Cliff Curtis, and Mexican Marina de Tavira. All police are corrupt and the only honest employee in the criminal justice system is a female prosecutor. The wealthy are irredeemably corrupt, having used their ill-gotten gains to move to gated communities on high ground. The audience is constantly assailed with political commentary, ranging from subtle to in-your-face, which distracts from the plot.
Water is everywhere. The film has more water images than Hannibal (2001). Water can symbolize many things: cleansing, baptism, life. Babies gestate in an amnionic sac of fetal urine. Reminiscence clients are partially immersed in a sort of sensory-deprivation chamber half filled with water, while their memories are projected into a sort of three-dimensional stage filled with gossamer strands resembling falling rain. When Nick (Hugh Jackman) visits Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), she asks if he wants a glass of water, which she pours from a high-tech filtration device. As they embrace, the glass shatters (possibly an allusion to a Jewish wedding ritual) and filtered water overflows onto the floor. Nick's brush with death occurs when he saves a villain from drowning and must choose between the welcoming embrace of the sea and the searing light from above. The film begins with a dolly shot of the ocean's waters engulfing the lower stories of skyscrapers, and ends with Nick easing into one of the Reminiscence chambers. It's never clear what all these water images are meant to symbolize, if anything. They're impressive and look frightfully expensive. The water is eventually shown to be connected to the villain's plot, but seems more of a distraction than anything else.
As with many films written and directed by females, Reminiscence has significant issues with nudity and sexuality. When sultry femme fatale Mae comes to his office, Nick says, "If you'd liked to get undressed,
we provide modesty suits, so I can slip out while you . . ." To which Mae replies, "You're gonna see it all anyway, aren't you?" The exchange establishes that clients need to be naked when they enter the Reminiscence chamber, but also creates a sort of Chekhov's gun, with the audience expecting to see Mae naked. But what follows is a series of awkward Hayes-Code-esque shots contrived to preserve the actress's modesty. The character professes nonchalance about nudity and is played by an actress from Sweden, a nation at the forefront of the 1970s sexual revolution, yet acts like a coy Disney contract player. Later, two other characters are shown in the chamber wearing garments and another is shown with medical breathing apparatus. Earlier, a wheelchair-bound character expresses an interest in revisiting memories of Angie, creating expectations of a steamy romantic interlude. But Angie turns out to be a dog. Nudity can represent innocence, or vulnerability, but the filmmakers equate it with adolescent titillation with no more insight than their handling of water imagery.
The film has a massive cosmos of reality issue in that the memories are presented as if in a hyper-realistic three-dimensional landscape seen from the perspective of a fly on the wall or a three-dimensional animation creator who can view the action from any angle, including events not witnessed by the client.
An extended gunfight is brilliantly choreographed and executed, but seems out of place in a noir film. Later the film seems to devolve into a chick flick before discarding all genre conventions to deliver a sophomoric statement promoting socialism.
Reminiscence is evocative of Blade Runner, Seven, 8mm, Inception, Chinatown, and various noir classics. It has all the necessary elements for a cinema classic, but squanders much of its potential with self-indulgent ennui-inducing wokeness.
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