B807-DES651
DVD Review Of The
Limey
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 5/10/09
Director Steven Soderbergh’s 1999 so-called crime-action film, The Limey, is easily the best film of Soderbergh’s that I’ve ever seen. Part of this is due to the innovative narrative structure that makes all but the most of the last few minutes of this great film a flashback, and the rest is due to an excellent script by screenwriter Lem Dobbs, whose other great success came a year earlier, in Alex Proyas’s sci fi film Dark City. Both films, despite their seeming divergence, are acutely focused on human memory, and both deal with the fragility of such in novel ways. In fact, in rewatching The Limey on DVD, after six or seven years, and then watching it with the two available audio commentary tracks, I’m amazed to have seen something in the film that no other critic apparently has, and that is the fact that the viewer is never sure whether or not any or all of the remembered scenes depicted are, indeed, real (within the fictive cosmos the film resides in).
The 85 minute long film quickly sets up the idea that the protagonist, named simply Wilson (and seemingly the same character as that portrayed in Ken Loach’s 1967 film Poor Cow (called either Dave, or Dave Wilson- I’m not sure for I’ve never seen that film, and there are conflicting accounts as to whether of not that character had both names revealed), and portrayed by Terence Stamp, is an ex-con out for revenge following the seeming accidental death of his daughter Jennifer (Melissa George- as an adult), a young woman who was living with a shady L.A.-based record mogul named Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda). Within the film’s first ten minutes viewers get the first ‘action’ scene of violence, and already identify heavily with the lead character, Wilson. The bulk of the rest of the film is about Wilson’s memories (or fantasies?) of his daughter, from the time he is on board a return flight from L.A to the U.K., and all the critics agree that the film is a series of memories, even if they disagree about what is the actual present time it displays. Some critics, as example, claim the airplane scenes represent flashforths, not flashbacks; some that seem to be chronological (although the scenes seem to be in proximate chronological groupings, not individually chronological), while others are not; but not a single critic seems to have ever questioned the verity of what Wilson’s memories are, or, if indeed, they are strictly memories, and not fantasies. After all, this film is a ‘revenge film,’ and revenge is, next to sex, the top theme of fantasies. Of course, some would argue that the scenes from Poor Cow seem to imply Wilson is all that he claims to be. But we only get snippets of this. Is Wilson really an ex-con? Likely. Is he in L.A. looking for revenge? Likely. But after that, is anyone really sure what is memory and what is fantasy, and, indeed, if Wilson’s ‘memory’ is accurate?
Some critics have carped about the fact that there are seeming plot holes, such as the fact that two of Jennifer’s friends, recruited by Wilson, seem to have no qualms about helping him in his revenge plot. First, if the film’s flashbacks are memories, and accurate, this is no problem because 1) Luis Guzman’s character, Eduardo Roel, is, like Wilson, an ex-con, and is no choirboy. Plus, he was Jenny’s friend (whom he met in an acting class), and, as the tale goes on it becomes clear that her ‘accidental’ death was likely not an accident. It’s certainly no stretch that he would go out of his way to help his friend’s father get justice (however rough), especially considering his own violent resentment toward rich people (throughout the film he wears t-shirts of murderous revolutionaries- Ayatollah Khomeini, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong), and after he is shot at by Valentine’s head goon. 2) Then there is Lesley Ann Warren’s Elaine, an actress who taught Jenny and Eduardo in their acting class. Why would she become involved in the revenge plot? Well, as with Eduardo, she was Jenny’s friend, and, like Eduardo, she experiences violence (the foiled hit on Wilson), and therefore would be more disposed to helping Wilson ‘take down’ these bad men. Add in to the fact that both characters likely have their own guilt over not having done more to aid and counsel Jenny over her distressing lifestyle, and foreseeing its deadly turn, and there really is no implausibility. In fact, both characters’ actions easily pass that old bane of dramatic theory, T.S. Eliot’s objective correlative. But, even these reasons are no great stretch, in themselves, they are not any reasonable objection if one factors in Wilson’s mismemories or outright fantasies of convenience, to justify his crime spree in search of vengeance. Even if Eduardo wanted to stay on the straight and narrow, and even if Elaine wanted nothing to do with Wilson, there’s simply no reason to believe that Wilson might not, as an act of self-justification, alter the events we viewers see, so to make himself more ‘heroic,’ if only in his own eyes (as well as viewers he’d not know of). And this includes the last minute ‘conversion’ scene, wherein Wilson finally gets to Valentine, and finds out that his daughter’s death was due to her pretending she was going to turn Valentine in for drug dealing, and he either deliberately or accidentally killed her when they struggled over the telephone. Valentine’s goons then put her body in a car and made her seem as if she had died in an accident. This resonates with Wilson because we’ve seen his memories of Jenny, as a girl, threatening to turn her dad in if he didn’t mend his ways. Wilson now realizes there was no way Valentine could have known Jenny would not have finked on him, and that Valentine only did what Wilson would have, had Jenny not been his daughter. Thus, he cannot blame Valentine. I’m not asserting, with certitude, that this is the best and most correct way to view the action detailed in the film, just that it’s more than legitimate to do so, induces no narrative nor characterization problems, and-most shockingly- is totally uncommented upon by all the major critics’ reviews one can find online.
Having elucidated that, let me summarize the basics of the plot: The film opens with a voiceover of a British man stating several times. ‘Tell me about Jenny!’ We then see Wilson comes to L.A., hooks up with Jenny’s friends, and pursues Valentine, who becomes his de facto White Whale. There is a terrific scene wherein Wilson tracks down drug traffickers in a warehouse, assaults the head thug, then gets the shit beat out of him, only to head back inside and kill all but one of the guys- a kid who runs away as Wilson screams, ‘Tell him I’m fucking coming!’ This sets off alarms for Valentine’s friend and security expert, a thug named Avery (Barry Newman); a man willing to hire hitmen if need be. We see many regrets of Wilson’s, including presumably his being finked on by old associates (another reason he eventually can find Valentine not guilty of murdering Jenny). Eduardo and Wilson crash a posh party at Valentine’s hillside manse. Here, we get an introduction to Valentine, in events that could not be Wilson’s memories (for he is not there), but very well could be his fantasies. We see Adhara (Amelia Heinle, a soap opera star who looks like a surgery-free Denise Richards) and, through the film, we get a good sense of the relationship she has with Valentine (who manipulates this young woman, the daughter of old friends of his). In this sequence we see the only explicit fantasy scenes in the film- wherein Wilson envisions several scenarios where he blows Valentine away. Why this sequence never planted the idea of fantasies throughout the film, in critics, is frankly amazing. Nonetheless, Eduardo prevents Wilson from living out his fantasy, and Avery gets suspicious. He sends a fat goon out to the patio, overlooking a ravine, to toss Wilson out of the party. Wilson headbutts the much larger man, and tosses him over the edge- another possible macho fantasy. Avery then pursues Wilson and Eduardo down the hilltop road and slams into their car. Avery pulls out a shotgun and fires at their car. Wilson puts the car in reverse (from the passenger side- the driver’s side in the U.K.- a nice touch) and rams their car into Avery’s, sending it over a cliff. Avery almost goes with it, until Eduardo restrains Wilson from finishing him off.
Back at the party, Valentine is covering up the murder of his goon, and Avery deduces Wilson’s connection to Jennifer, whose photo is missing from outside his bedroom. Avery then hires two hitman, Stacy (Nicky Katt) and his partner (Joe Dallesandro) to kill Wilson. The hit is foiled by rogue DEA agents who are after Valentine. In a nice touch, we see all the DEA agents are black, and this contrasts with Valentine’s earlier fear that the hit on his men at the warehouse was carried out by ‘blacks,’ presumably rival drug dealers. Wilson meets the DEA head agent (Bill Duke), who lets him go, after planting information about Valentine’s retreat from L.A., to a second manse in Big Sur, in Wilson’s mind. Both men want Valentine finished, but for different reasons. In Big Sur, Wilson plans to pursue Valentine, but is joined by the two hitmen, who suspect that Valentine has some real cash involved, since the DEA is on his tail. There is a series of unexplained things that occur- including attacks on Avery’s men, and Avery orders the others to hide. He takes out a gunman, who is revealed to be Stacy. His partner shoots Avery and another of Avery’s men. The partner is then shot by Avery. Valentine tries to escape, but Wilson appears, taking advantage of the chaos, and attacks Valentine. Adhara stabs him with some implement, and he smacks her down, as Valentine escapes. Seeing Avery down, Valentine does nothing to help his old friend (who clearly resents Valentine’s success and wealth), and just takes his gun. Avery literally spits and curses at him. Wilson walks by Avery, who aims his gun at him. Wilson stares at Avery, who drops the gun, either out of weakness or a tacit desire to see Wilson give Valentine what he’s got coming.
A pursuit follows, on a rocky beach. Valentine shoots aimlessly at Wilson, then snaps his ankle while fleeing. He runs out of bullets, and Wilson demands that Valentine tells him about Jenny. We get Valentine’s version of things, Wilson’s connecting with Valentine, and then the fadeout on the plane. In an earlier take on this film I put it this way: ‘Wilson knew her (Jenny) well enough to know she’d never do it. Valentine didn’t. He senses it was his fault for not being there enough in her childhood, due to his incarceration, to prepare his daughter for the fact not all men will know her as well as her father. His selfish pursuit of crime set her on the path to her own demise. Valentine did what Wilson would have done to anyone but Jenny had they threatened him. At this realization Wilson lets go of Valentine. Apparently, he does not kill him.’ That apparently is an important point. We do not know what really transpired, between Valentine and Wilson or Valentine and Jenny, so her death’s reason (accidental or not) lessens in import. It’s likely that Wilson just let Valentine have to explain the mess to others, but we are not certain, and uncertainty (along with memory and fantasy) is a core theme of this film. The very last scene is a piece from Poor Cow, which shows Wilson singing a song of longing and regret.
The Limey, however, is, despite its billing, most certainly not a
crime-action film. There is crime and action in it, but it is a character study,
and one of the absolute best ever put to film. Aside from the flashback-flashforth
technique is the use of editing in dialogue from earlier or later scenes into a
visual scene that seemingly is unrelated. Also, there is the bleeding over of
dialogue from earlier or later scenes while the current scene plays out. This
also aids in the mnemonic tendencies of the film, and Sarah Flack, the film
editor, does an impressive job, as does cinematographer Ed Lachman. A great
example of this works in antichoros to the Poor Cow scenes with Stamp,
and that is the edited introduction of Terry Valentine, which show the Peter
Fonda character in a montage akin to that of a television sitcom opening
sequence, as The Hollies’ song, King Midas In Reverse, plays- a song
which openly mentions Fonda’s most iconic film, Easy Rider. We see
Valentine preening, smiling, smoking, expounding, driving, etc., and we later
see these are all flashforths from scenes later in the film, but ones which
herald a weak-kneed and ultimately sniveling bad guy, not a highly anticipated
supervillain- one of many wise choices in editing that are made. It’s a
testament to this little seen film, at the time, that just a year later
Christopher Nolan’s low budget cult classic Mememto (a more classic
crime thriller), would steal many of the same editing techniques used in this
film. The film’s score, from its opening of The Who’s The Seeker, to
The Hollies’ song, to the many eerie noises that suggest internal turmoil, is
also excellent, and Cliff Martinez should also take his kudos. The acting is
also first rate. Stamp is superb, and so is Fonda, in a much more difficult
role- sympathetic bad guy. The secondary characters all give good performances,
as well- especially Barry Newman as the clean up man for Valentine. Even the
gorgeous Heinle, in a role that could have been filled by any lightweight bimbo
actress, makes viewers see nuances in both her and Fonda’s characters that a
lesser performance would not have exposed. In an earlier take on this film, I
wrote of Stamp: ‘the character & portrayer of The Limey (Terence Stamp) equally
dominates his film being in virtually every scene. Stamp is so good the viewer
can see him acting even when his character is silent, brooding, & glaring
off into his own life’s nothingness.’
But the film also makes use of not only technical excellence, but the
superb screenplay by Lem Dobbs, and equally superb direction by Soderbergh. I
also wrote of the screenplay, and the use of parallelism: ‘We also learn
background about Valentine. He, like Wilson, is a 60ish man who is a criminal,
except he rose to fame & wealth producing hit records in the 1960s, &
has the means to cover up his crimes. Jenny was 1 in a string of nubile young
lovers- his latest a gorgeous brunet, Adhara (Amelia Heinle), the daughter of
old friends. Valentine is haunted by Jenny’s death & finds in Adhara a
confessor he can bare his soul to. In a great move, Soderbergh not only has the
film’s protagonist & antagonist being portrayed by 2 1960s film superstars
(Stamp in the U.K., & Fonda in the U.S.), but both their characters made
sizable sums of money from rock music- Valentine from record producing &
Wilson from stealing receipts from a Pink Floyd concert. This 1 of many
parallel character traits Wilson & Valentine share, an important point,
& the core of the movie. The realization of this fact in the film- as great
a character study as ever filmed- really packs an emotional punch, for only when
Wilson realizes his daughter turned to Valentine as a surrogate for himself does
he realize he’s as much to blame for her death as Valentine is.’ It
should be mentioned that both men also show little remorse over resorting to
murder to accomplish their ends. Another point to make, re: the use of the Poor
Cow scenes, is that, ‘Critics argue film used as memory fails because
it’s almost always shown from an omniscient perspective, yet when I recall
things I almost never recall them from the POV of my eye, but from an improvised
omniscient position outside my body. Every person similarly recounts they recall
in the omniscient, not the real eye level POV. Most dreams are this way as well-
the dreamer shifting between perspectives.’ This fact also allows for the
interpretation of the film’s events as memories, reveries, fantasies, or
mismemories. I also wrote: ‘What is most interesting about the film is how
accurately it portrays memory, guilt, & responsibility. The question all the
main characters ask is how could things have been different? There are no
answers. Wilson, by film’s end, accepts the past. Aside from great
performances by Stamp, Fonda, & Newman, bravura directing, editing, & a
great, insightful script the film, like The Third Man, abounds in
wonderful little touches- when Wilson imagines Jenny’s accident he envisions
her with her hair down & bangs cut, like the little girl the film portrays
she was when he last saw her in person. When Ed thinks about her death she has a
long ponytail- like the adult he knew. The film cuts goes back & forth
through the progressive remembered narrative of the film, sometimes seeming to
act (to the viewer) as foreshadowing or depicting obsessive compulsion.’
But, aside from memory, there are simply superbly rendered details that
distill the characters: Wilson radiates affection for Eduardo’s help in
tracking down Valentine by fondly calling him Sancho (as in Panza). All of these
things, along with Eduardo’s and Elaine’s motivations, and the portrayal of
the relationship between the hitmen, work, and do so precisely because there are
no specifics, but generalities sharply enough etched that the viewer
‘feels,’ as well as understands, the motivations and relationships, and this
haze aids in the imbuing of character and motivation, thus giving percipients
enough to entice and do the rest of the work filling in the blanks. This allows
the viewer to feel much of the things Wilson does, thus creating a stronger
identification with him than would be gotten were all things laid out in a nice,
neat line. The film succeeds greatly because it allows many such little moments
to flower- some of them (like the banter between the hitmen over homosexuals)
wholly unneeded for the essential plot of the film, but, when added, detract
nothing, and increase the ‘realism’ of the art. Another good example is the
use of Cockney rhyming slang by Stamp. It’s never overused (five times, by my
count), but were it gone, no one would yearn for something like it. However,
once there, it indelibly helps sketch Wilson’s character. This is the essence
of good writing done subtly. But, such writing is not limited to
characterization. The fact that the two hitmen’s own greed ends up enabling
Wilson to get to Valentine (the opposite of what they were hired to do) is a
nice bit of irony, and even the fact that only a few weeks (apparently) have
gone by since Jenny’s death, and Valentine is already boffing a younger,
prettier girl, and one who is (gauchely) the daughter of his old friends, says
all we need to know of the depth and sincerity of the man- as well as his later
claims about what really happened to Jenny when she died.
The DVD, by Artisan films, is terrific. The film is superbly transferred,
and shown in a 16:9 widescreen version, and has excellent extras, including
television and theatrical trailers, and isolated music score, production notes,
very detailed cast and crew information (especially considering this DVD hit the
market in 2000. But, bar none, the commentaries for this film are the real
cherries on the cake. The ‘60s Docu-commentary’, with selected
comments by Stamp, Fonda, Warren, Newman, Dallesandro, Dobbs and Soderbergh is
quite good, and is in tune with the whole film’s tangential play off its many
characters’ iconic 1960s personae. Stamp speaks of how English acting has
changed over the years, his relationship with other 1960s icons, and it all
makes for an anjoyable diversion. But the real gem is the commentary featuring
Soderbergh and Dobbs alone. It’s one of the best around, and the bickering
between the two, with Dobbs continually hectoring and berating Soderbergh over
choices he made in the final film, and Soderbergh’s continual defenses and
slaps at the difference between writing and film, is not the typical Abbott and
Costello routine it could have devolved into. Instead, it’s an illuminating
discussion of art and film.
Dobbs seems to resent much of the film because its positive aspects are routinely hailed as Soderbergh’s work- such as the scene where Wilson re-enters the warehouse to kill the drug dealers, but the camera stays outside; which Dobbs claims was in his script, and not a directorial choice, while claimed negative aspects, like some negative reviews (notably Emanuel Levy’s in Variety) of the film accuse the screenplay of being ‘underdeveloped,’ and even positive reviews, like James Berardinelli’s, claim the film is founded on the ‘thinnest premise,’ are foisted upon Dobbs’ work. First, Dobbs shows far too little confidence in his own work and ego, and, second, there is a difference between positive and negative and good and bad reviews. Positive reviews can be bad if they praise schlock (think most Steven Spielberg films), and they can be good if they praise great films (such as The Limey). Equally, negative reviews can be bad if they damn great films (Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line was often dissed in comparison to Spielberg’s schlocky Saving Private Ryan), or good if they damn garbage (think most Ron Howard films). Dobbs seems to not understand this, or only gets it intellectually, not viscerally. Going back to the first point, though, the screenplay is anything but underdeveloped. There are so many little scenes that play to character development, something Dobbs wanted more of. But, to beg the cliché- too much of a good thing can be bad.
As example, Dobbs wanted Fonda’s character to have a lengthy soliloquy on the 60s zeitgeist, but Soderbergh cut that, and he was right. Even Fonda, in the other commentary, pans the soliloquy as being too saccharine and out of character. One need not know everything about every character, and Valentine is a slippery, seedy son of a bitch. Knowing why he’s that way is always going to be an exercise in futility. Also, it’s likely that Valentine is incapable of such reflection. Dobbs also wanted Wilson to reflect upon and mention a criminal mentor, back in England, called Lambeth. But, we already get enough hints of his past from the Poor Cow scenes; some mystery has to be retained, lest viewers be subsumed in the petty. Another example comes in Dobbs’ desire to have the two hitmen, played by Katt and Dallesandro, explicitly shown as being related, with Katt’s character the nephew of the older, dumber man. But, this would have done nothing to aid the characters, nor viewer interest. Two scenes illustrate how well these very minor characters are developed. The first is when we first glimpse them, and we see Stacy provoking a fight at a pool table with a pair of other men. The guy he enrages steps toward Stacy, and the older hitman conks him in the head with the pool cue. Stacy then kicks the guy in the face and knocks him out. The way they work together shows much of their long term closeness. A bit later, we see the duo stalking Elaine and Wilson on the set of her television series, and Stacy starts making crude remarks about the people around the set, especially the homosexuals. That scene perfectly illustrates typical male relationships: a) the two men are not looking at each other eye to eye, but next to each other, as if at a ball game and envisioning something in the ether, and b) they are so comfortable with each other that we sense their relationship is more than just partners in crime- and clearly the older man is either slightly retarded or somehow mentally impaired. We simply do not need to know more- and, of course, we get a bit of their collective greed a bit later on, and it leads to their demise. Soderbergh got this right, whereas Dobbs’ elaborations would have weighted the film down in unnecessary detail, as well as some questionable psychology (think of the most outdated Hitchcockian villains). I recall the line from Woody Allen’s film Another Woman, where the lead character, played by Gena Rowlands, states something to the effect that just because some things (like feelings) are important to the writer does not mean it has import to the objective observer, who will see something as maudlin, overblown, and embarrassing.
This also mitigates against such silly claims about the screenplay being style over substance or, ‘….the real problem with The Limey is that the dialogue is terribly stilted. Time after time the action grinds to a halt with statements like: ‘The 60s is a place that exists only in your imagination,’ (Fonda) or, when Stamp and Guzman are perched on a cantilevered swimming pool high above the Hollywood Hills: ‘What are we standing on, anyway?’ ‘Trust.’ But this is Noir Lite. Camera tricks can't replace one immortal stick-to-your-ribs line like this one from Treasure of Sierra Madre: "Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!’ What the dense critic does not mention is that the line from the John Huston film is spoken earnestly, while the ‘Trust’ line is spoken offhandedly by the highly cynical and derisive Eduardo, who resents the opulence of the Valentine manse. The line also occurs after the two men have established a relationship, to the point where they feel free to kid with each other. It is the kind of line that actually represents very good writing and dialogue. It is not in the least bit stilted, and says far more about the limits of the critic, and his or her knowledge of what constitutes good writing, than it does about Dobbs’ ability to craft dialogue. To compare the two lines is to compare Marlon Brando’s ‘contenduh speech’ from On The Waterfront with a Groucho Marx routine. An utterly silly criticism, but the sort that Dobbs takes far too much umbrage in.
However, Dobbs rightly revels in his claim that it was he who pushed Soderbergh to fragment the narrative of the film even more than his original scenario, and he uses shots of a contemplative Wilson to debunk the notion that ‘thinking’ cannot be shown on film, or at least not creatively enough to ensnare a viewer. He also elaborates on the parallelism I mentioned earlier, and goes into the notion of doubles, that almost all the characters pair off into groups of two: Wilson and Eduardo, Wilson and Elaine, Wilson and Jenny, Valentine and Jenny, Valentine and Adhara, Valentine and Avery, Avery and his assorted thugs, Stacy and his partner, the two black DEA agents that foil the hit on Wilson, and other minor pairings, and also correctly contextualizes such shots as literary techniques adapted to film, not natal cinematic techniques, as well as showing how a screenplay can be filmed word for word, yet also be unlike that envisioned by the screenwriter, when he complains of the Valentine character keeping a photo of Jenny in the stairwell. Soderbergh says he was limited by the physical space of the home they shot in, but, given Valentine’s character, it’s certainly not unexpected for him to have kept up appearances by having Jenny’s photo around to show his ‘grief’ to others, as opposed to his guilt- something we see he has little of. Another point Dobbs scores with is when he rightly complains about critics who crib information from production notes, and not the film. In the case of The Limey it’s critics who claim Wilson’s first name is Dave, due to the Poor Cow scenes. But, while footage from that film is used, we do not diegetically know if the flashback scenes from the earlier film definitively point to Wilson being that character, or merely being a personification of the cross-appropriation of complementary scenes from a different fictive universe for Soderbergh’s purposes. But, such bad criticism predates this film, and goes back to Alain Resnais’s Last Year In Marienbad, wherein the main characters are claimed to be named after letters, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup (and yes, the actual title in the film is Blowup, not Blow-Up), wherein the nameless lead characters are referred to by names that are never mentioned nor uttered in the film, and are clearly divined from some extra-diegetic source.
The two men also discourse on why Hollywood films tend to ignore exploring issues like class, race, and what people’s wages are. Given that this point was made a decade before the current economic crisis shows the universality of such a sentiment, and why so many films are so lacking in ‘real realism.’ They also talk about the demise of B films, low budget films, and why ‘little’ films are so rare today. Given how often young directors are handed huge budgets to make films aimed at twelve year olds’ desires, a revival of studio backed B films (rather than the straight to DVD crap of the last twenty years), as a sort of ‘farm system’ for directors with talent (think Sam Fuller or Jacques Tourneur, or Sam Peckinpah or Robert Wise, who went from B to A film directors), makes eminent sense. Finally, in a move that is either a bit of an oddity, or an attempt at innovating the audio commentary, there are moments when Soderbergh’s and Dobbs’ commentaries overlap with each other, in recapitulation of the visual editing techniques.
Regardless, The Limey is the rare example of that most overused and abused term, an utter cinematic masterpiece that explores memory as a thing in itself, as a way to communicate, as well as a form of regret. It asks serious queries of the human psyche- not just those of kind like what is good?, or what is evil?, but those of degree like what constitutes a crime?, and when does it become a crime?, as well as the aforementioned queries of whether the film, the vehicle for this philosophizing, is dream, memory, fantasy, and if Wilson ever really gets (or got) off that airplane? To return to the aforementioned film, Another Woman, that film ends with the explicit question: Is a memory something you have or something you’ve lost? The Limey shows better than any film I can think of, that the answer to that query can be neither or both.
[An expurgated version of this article originally appeared on the Alternative Film Guide website.]
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