GRADE: B+
It turns out Robert Pattinson sparkles after all. Known around the world by millions of teenaged girls as the heartthrob vampire from the “Twilight” franchise, Pattinson proves in “Remember Me” that adults should take him seriously, too. “Remember Me” is a moving and gentle film about the healing power of love and the indiscriminate agony of loss.
Pattinson plays Tyler Hawkins, a sort of modern day James Dean, rebellious and brooding, emotionally crippled by the suicide of his older brother and the indifference of his work-obsessed, filthy rich, Wall Street lawyer father (Pierce Brosnan) who he is obviously terrified of becoming. Tyler is nearly the same age his brother was when he took his life, a milestone that manipulates his emotional state like a marionette on strings.
When Tyler’s not in the dilapidated Lower East Side apartment he shares with his happy-go-lucky, smart-alecky roommate Aidan (Tate Ellington), he can be found with his 11-year-old sister Caroline (Ruby Jerins), whom he obviously looks up to and shares the most intimate connection of their fragmented family.
Tyler is an apathetic student at NYU and it is there that he meets Ally (Emilie de Ravin, in the film’s one preposterously contrived moment), an equally wounded young woman still scarred after witnessing the brutal murder of her mother ten years earlier. Ally’s father (Chris Cooper) is a working-class Queens detective who has had a run in with Tyler before, a bit of information Tyler chooses to keep to himself. Though Ally is prickly at first and rebuffs Tyler’s advances, she eventually lets her guard down long enough to strike up a tender romance.Both young people come together saddled with the demons of past and impending tragedies that will affect their union in ways they cannot possibly anticipate.
Even before I knew “Remember Me” was penned by first-time screenwriter Will Fetters, I could tell it was the work of a fresh artist, not because it was amateurish, but because the script shimmers with the sensitivity and meticulous attention to emotional detail that is almost always the hallmark of someone who poured their heart and soul into a project they figured might be their only shot.
Fetters infuses his story of youthful angst and romantic discovery with the sort of lost, directionless, outcast souls at odds with their patents. These are, however, rebels with a cause. Deliberately paced (that’s film critic speak for slow), “Remember Me” is helped rather than hampered by Allen Coulter’s confident if low-key direction, perfectly capturing a pre-9/11 New York City.
Almost none of the primary actors are American. There is the British Pattinson, Aussie de Ravin, Irish Brosnan (it takes a little while to get used to Brosnan’s Brooklyn accent), and Swedish Olin (as Tyler’s mother). All are terrific (though none is better than Cooper), but the real standouts of the film are the newcomers: the very droll Ellington and Jerins, best known for her role on “Nurse Jackie.”
Occasionally you come across an actor who so arrests your attention that you can’t help but bellow their name to anyone who will listen. Jerins is such an actor. The young girl is one to watch, the sort of stop-you-in-your-tracks talent that comes along only once in a great while.
What are we to make of the film’s conclusion? To elucidate what I mean would spoil the plot. Tonally, the film ends in manner similar to a movie released several weeks ago. In my review for that film, my disgust resembled hot magma. Yet “Remember Me’s” dénouement did not extract the same volcanic response in me. One filmed seemed to delight in tragedy while the other used it to make a larger point. Throughout “Remember Me,” Tyler reads from a book of Greek myths, exultantly heroic stories to be sure, but also filled with the sort of withering calamity that should give us a clue to this film’s poignant DNA.
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