Unforgettable

(John Dahl, USA, 1996)

Unforgettable was among the three worst movies at the 1996 Melbourne Film Festival, alongside I Shot Andy Warhol and To Have and To Hold. Why did all these shockers obtain more-or-less instant theatrical releases, while Todd Haynes' Safe (1995) languished without a local distributor for eight years, and Mark Rappaport's From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995) and Wim Wenders' The Brothers Skladanowsky (1995) never got a return-performance at all? I could get very depressed pondering this.

From a distance, Unforgettable is inviting. An intriguing plot premise: a serum that, when injected, allows one to experience another person's memories. A jazzy update of the film noir formula: a murder mystery, moral ambiguities, intricate frame-ups everywhere. A noted director: there have been lively and clever elements in every John Dahl film, especially Red Rock West (1993).

Up close, Unforgettable is a horrifying mess. It is not easy to say why this game mixture of Brainstorm (1983), Jade (1995), Strange Days (1995) and Dead Ringers (1988) just does not gel. Perhaps it is because Dahl's style lacks the outlandish, nutty, gleeful streak that Brian De Palma or Dario Argento would have brought to the project.

This is a film that never manages to make its premise either dramatically believable or madly unbelievable. Ray Liotta plays the role of the tormented, tripping Dr Krane with nervy restraint; next to him, Linda Fiorentino (mouthing scientific and psychological theories as she did in Jade) plays for laughs as if she was Betty Boop.

Like Strange Days, Unforgettable keeps replaying, with slight variations, its Primal Scene – the gruesome murder of Krane's wife. These souped-up flashbacks, triggered by the magic serum, are meant to be memory traces as recorded through human eyes but – nonsensically – they look just like professionally staged and cut movie segments.

Argento, Oliver Stone or the creators of the TV series Nowhere Man might have been able to make something of this fanciful discrepancy; something at once corny, hysterical and nightmarish. Dahl has turned in a tiresome, unengaging work that progressively gets louder, faster and more garish, but never once managed to take hold of this spectator.

MORE Dahl: Road Kill

© Adrian Martin October 1996