20 Apr Lost in the Stars (2022)

Film within

I think I have seen this plot twice before, and pretty sure one was a TeeVee movie. In that case, the orchestrator was the local police chief.

What we have here is a combination of noir that turns out to be what I call a folded narrative, being a film within a film. The noir element is the start, where an average guy wakes up to discover his wife is someone he does not recognise. All the evidence: photos, witnesses, passport, back up the wife, who claims her husband has mental problems.

We are held in suspense, more or less believing him. He is joined by someone who helps him get to the bottom of what is going on, and there are some twists and turns as things get complicated. This is standard noir, where the gods behind the world of the film manipulate a random person, usually a guy.

At the end, things shift and we understand that essentially every scene we’ve witnessed was fake, manipulated to fool both the husband and us. What we’ve seen is a film (or play actually) within the film. To my mind, this shift was handled deftly so that it is more than a mere plot twist — we do get an ordinary plot twist at the very end after this noir to play-within shift.

So this remark is on the craft involved in that final twist, and how it makes the noir -> play shift more than a twist. They didn’t need that for the story, but it is there because it makes the main narrative device more fundamental than a last minute revealed fact.

Posted in 2024

Ted’s Evaluation — 3 of 3: Worth watching.

IMDB