The National: “Robert Pattinson-Beyond Twilight”

This is a review of “Remember Me” & contains slight spoilers!!

The 23-year-old Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson shows there is more to him than luminescent skin in this strange, unpredictable drama – a curio that’s rather more interesting than US critics let on (it currently rates just 27 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). The most likely reason for their disdain is something of a spoiler, so we won’t go there except to say that the ending could be seen as opportunistic and gimmicky – though it seems to me earned and thought-provoking.
But enough about endings, let’s go back to the beginning: Pattinson plays Tyler, an ambivalent New York student who seems to be channelling James Dean. He’s a rich kid carrying a big chip on his shoulder since his older brother killed himself shortly after going to work for their father (Pierce Brosnan).

With that anniversary staring him in the face, Tyler is struggling to keep it all together. One night, he has a run-in with a police detective who has anger issues of his own (Chris Cooper). And a few days later, out of the blue, he meets the detective’s daughter, Ally (Emilie de Raven), and chats her up as a sort of payback. One thing leads to another and they fall in love – but what will happen when she takes him to meet her dad?

The director Allen Coulter (Hollywoodland) and the first-time screenwriter Will Fetters let that question percolate in the background while giving us what seems to be a conventional romance. He’s moody and impetuous. She’s prone to eating her dessert before the entrée (why save the best till last?). They hit it off.

But gradually you realise the movie isn’t heading where you thought it was. Coulter seems more interested in the bad blood between Tyler and his dad than a youthful love story would normally demand, not to mention a subplot concerning his precocious little sister Caroline (Ruby Jerins). Then there’s the tragedy in Ally’s background, the murder of her mother when she was just 11.

Charismatic and convincingly inhabiting his American accent, Pattinson seems like the real deal here – Tyler is persuasively intelligent (an aspiring writer), often inarticulate and self-destructive, but always attractive and engaging. A late flash of anger was so violent – in emotion, not physical destruction – it made me gasp. On this evidence Pattinson is a genuine star in the making. De Raven is a sympathetic partner, a far cry from the usual pretty bland thing. Only Tate Ellington lets down a very solid supporting cast, overdoing it a bit as the smart alec best friend.

It would be wrong to overstate the film’s accomplishments. Some of the dialogue is trite and clichéd, the ending is … troubling. But at least it is an attempt to make something reflective of our life and times, and a rare romance that dares to break with convention.