Are we Leonard>

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2000)

You think you know movie flashbacks? Nah.
Interesting editing, interesting performances and an interesting story ... although I gave it a nine, I've no doubt that this was in part because of the editing, the backwards linearity of the storytelling. When the DVD is out and I can watch the chapters in the "correct" order I'm sure that gaping holes will appear and the story won't seem half as curious.

As we left the cinema and walked home we couldn't work the story out. Had we been given enough information after the apparently abrupt ending? Was Leonard's wife diabetic? Had he already avenged her death (having unwittingly killed her)? Had we really seen him, with tattoos, with her? Were the occasional flashes of memory (like remembering that the licence plate was fact six) down to his sometime failing or the scriptwriter's fallibility.
Or was that the point? That we spent time after the film trying to recreate the story proved the fallibility of our memories - a meta-level, interactive display of what we'd just seen.
Inventive, exhausting, provoking, gripping - a splendid film.