Before I Go to Sleep prefers creepy car parks to feelings

Before I Go To Sleep is Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestselling thriller of 2011, but whereas the book was smart, gripping, ingeniously plotted and had psychological depth — who are we, when we can’t remember who we are? — this is a disappointment on so many levels. It’s not as if it’s even set in Crouch End, north London, any more. According to my press notes, Crouch End was not deemed sufficiently ‘cinematic’, which has to be upsetting, if you live in Crouch End, as I do, and have always said to people, ‘Come on over. You’ll love it. It’s just so very cinematic round here’, but there you are. I suppose I’ll learn to live with it, as uncinematically as I can.

The film, which is now set in a modernist 1960s house in an unspecified UK location — oh!; how cinematic! — opens rather brilliantly, with a sudden jolt, with the close-up of a single, startled, bloodshot eye. The eye belongs to Christine (Nicole Kidman), who wakes up every morning and doesn’t remember that the man in bed next to her is Ben (Colin Firth), her own husband, so no wonder she is shocked. Christine suffers from ‘atypical psychogenic amnesia’, which means that ever since she incurred a head injury, 13 years earlier, she can’t store new memories. She can hang on to information until she goes to bed, but by the following morning it’s all been wiped. ‘You store up information for a day, wake up, and it’s all gone,’ Ben tells her, wearily, for the umpteenth time.

He then leaves for work, and the phone rings. On the other end is a man who identifies himself as Dr Nash (Mark Strong). He tells Christine that he’s the neuropsychologist who has been helping her, without Ben’s knowledge.