I have a feeling deep in my gut that Trance— Danny Boyle’s follow up to 2010’s 127 Hours— inevitably will draw a lot of comparisons to another trippy, mind-bending film about theft, reality, deception, and the nature of memory by a certain well-liked British filmmaker. But Boyle isn’t Christopher Nolan; he never has been and he never will be, and that’s a good thing. How will Boyle handle a film about a thief (James McAvoy), an art auctioneer (Vincent Cassell), a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson), and the search to recover a lost, stolen painting? In a word, artfully. Have a look for yourself and see what you think:
More interesting than the heist itself is Boyle’s shot compositions, which frequently reflect the shape of picture frames. Maybe that’s a bit on the nose given the nature of the plot, but it’s hard to deny how great the imagery on display here looks. If anything should be of concern, it’s that the trailer feels like it gives away far, far too much– there’s a beat between Cassell and Dawson that absolutely feels like a significant, mid-story reveal instead of a detail we should be aware of going into the film– but I also tend to think that Boyle is a better filmmaker than that.
So, in short, I’m looking forward to Trance, which opens up in the UK on March 27th. It’ll get its US release sometime after, likely over the summer, courtesy of Fox Searchlight.
(Source: First Showing)
