Stay

Synopsis: A distraught young man (Ryan Gosling) announces to his psychiatrist (Ewan McGregor) that he plans to commit suicide in three days. The psychiatrist's desperate attempts to help his new patient lead him on an nightmarish trip through the city and to a place between life and death.

You're asking for trouble when you call a film Stay. Nasty reviewers will mock it openly as a pathetic attempt to stop you from leaving the cinema. Of course, those who love this film will call it an appropriate injunction, but honestly, you don't want to hang around with people like that.

Short of a complete rewrite, there are two ways to elevate a mediocre script. Number 1. Cast excellent actors and have them invest the story with an inner life that sells you on it. Here we have Ewan McGregor as Sam Foster, a psychiatrist involved with a former patient of his. Enter Naomi Watts as Lila, an art teacher who tried to kill herself once, but is all better now, sort of. Sam is treating Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling) an intense young man who announces he's going to kill himself. Ok, so check one, good actors. The basic plot is that Sam has to stop him somehow, but in chasing him ends up questioning the nature of reality. Do the actors sell you on it? No. Ryan Gosling is very intense, but everyone else seems to be only half there.

Ok, so the acting is pretty ordinary. But still, there's option 2... Assault the viewer with visual trickery aimed at distracting you from how woeful the film is by dazzling you with technical gimcrackery. Stay opens on a car crash shown from the perspective of a car tyre. But that's about as inventive as it gets in involving you in the action on screen. You see, when all you do is show a roll-call of tricks everyone has ripped off since Fight Club and Requiem for a Dream, well, things aren't looking good. Imagine every sub-textual element translated into a visual (and hence no longer sub-textual) and you will begin to understand how tedious this film is.

But now to the central conceit. It's a clever one, in that once you get to the "big twist" all the ridiculous plotting, bad acting and shonky editing suddenly makes sense. I won't give it away, but it was kinda neat in the way it was what you expected, but not entirely. But you need to ask yourself a question. Are you willing to sit through some of the most annoying editing, special effects and hokey scripting to get to a twist that explains that it's MEANT to be confused, half-present and woodenly-acted? The film has its moments, but nothing to make this more than a DVD rental on a rainy day.

 

 

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