Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) is an introverted guy who has difficulty making eye contact with people, let alone asking them out. One Valentine’s Day, on a random impulse, he ditches work and heads to the beach in Montauk, where he keeps seeing a girl in a bright orange sweatshirt with even brighter blue hair. Her name is Clementine (Kate Winslet) and, despite their vastly contrasting personalities, they spend the day together, and the next. Alas, all is not great in their world, however, and sadly their relationship ends when, on another impulse, Clementine decides to erase Joel from her memory using a little known company who specialises in a very concentrated form of brain damage. Joel opts to undergo the same procedure, but it doesn’t quite go as planned when he decides mid-operation that he might have made the wrong decision.
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Tag Archives: Kirsten Dunst
The Virgin Suicides

The film has been shot with an air of beauty and nostalgia – opening with an upbeat yet mellow soundtrack of a bright sunny days, the light dappling through the trees of a suburban Michigan town – but this is immediately contrasted to the stark sterile blue of Cecilia lying in a bathtub, being carted away by the paramedics. This jarring emotional toggle switch occurs a couple more times throughout the picture, and each time it is effective. The narration, by one of the boys waiting outside each day just to catch a glimpse of the girls, is largely unemotional and distanced from events, as though bored of a story told many times before.
From what I know the 1970s was recreated well, particularly in the fashions and vile interior design. Every shot was reminiscent of an old photograph, saturated and hazy, almost sepia and fading at the edges. Unusually, a lot of the scenes didn’t play out as I originally expected, even more of a surprise when you consider they have such standard high school movie tropes as a prom, featuring parents enthusiastic at their daughters’ dates, fumbled first dances and peach schnappes under the podium (“Babes love it.”) The script is at times comic, and occasionally blackly so, with my favourite moment being when, after awaking in the hospital, her doctor tells Cecilia she shouldn’t have tried to kill herself because she’s “not even old enough to know how bad life gets,” which is a pretty terrible way of convincing someone not to try and kill themselves again, but her response is perfect, “You’ve never been a 13-year old girl.”
I suppose I should mention Josh Hartnett, who appears as the local dreamboat, Trip Fontaine, adored by students, parents and teachers alike, all except Dunst’s Lux, which only makes him want her more. Hartnett is his usual self, and I’m not too much of a fan (his only good films in my opinion are Sin City, The Faculty and Black Hawk Down, which surprise surprise don’t feature him all too heavily), and his abominable curtains-style haircut almost ruined the film for me. It was nice to see him playing such a prick though. Hayden Christensen is also in there somewhere, which is never a good thing.
So, whilst it’s not really going to cheer you up after a long day’s work, this is still a very well made and easily appreciated film, far better than I was expecting from Coppola. The ending in particular left me reeling for days afterwards.
Choose film 8/10
Spiderman 1 & 2
