"My God, there's people coming out of your butt"

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2010)

In which a voluntarily "brain-damaged" Jim Carrey attempts to squirrel memories of Kate Winslet into places it doesn't belong, during a neat inversion of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth: if he doesn't look back, she's history. Charlie Kaufman's forceful counter-argument to Henry Ford's "History is bunk!" is arguably his most accomplished and moving story to date.
At the public screening I caught, couples-watching was compulsory. In the row in front of me, a young man made as if to caress his girlfriend's shoulder, as she subtly, perhaps unconsciously, pulled away, while his hand dropped slowly to his lap again. As the lights went up, the couples left the auditorium, silently and not touching, preoccupied in their thoughts. I was single at the time. I laughed, silently.