Never Let Me Go (Fox Searchlight)

Never Let Me Go

Studio: Fox Searchlight
Mark Romanek

Sep 16, 2010 By Chris Tinkham Web Exclusive

In this film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s (The Remains of the Day) celebrated novel, Carey Mulligan plays Kathy, an intuitive but inhibited English boarding school girl who has grown up alongside her two closest friends, Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley). On a fateful afternoon, the children learn the shared secret to their purpose at the school, and this complicates a love struggle among the three friends as they mature.

Helmed by renowned music video director Mark Romanek, Never Let Me Go is finely crafted on the surface, from Romanek and cinematographer Adam Kimmel’s hauntingly pastoral visuals, to Jane Monheit’s swooning rendition of the title song. But the film’s opening sequence undermines some of the mystery, and, judging from the scene in which the young Kathy listens to the throwback ballad, it’s evident that something essential was lost in the adaptation for the screen. The novel’s most provocative underlying question is reduced here to mere head scratching.

Nonetheless, the pathos that Carey Mulligan wears on her face throughout the film is achingly magnetic, while Garfield and Knightley bring touching vulnerability to their parts, as does Isobel Meikle-Small in the role of the young Kathy. (www.foxsearchlight.com/neverletmego)

Author rating: 7/10

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Average reader rating: 9/10