After watching this red-band for Danny Boyle’s upcoming Trance, I couldn’t be more sold. A heady hypno-thriller, one where reality conflicts with the power of suggestion, Trance sees Boyle returning to grittier crime fare after delivering on the nausea-inducing yet uplifting 127 Hours. I don’t want to oversell this, but that talking bloody stump is fan-fucking-tastic. Synopsis after trailer:
TRANCE, directed by Oscar®-winning filmmaker Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) and co-written by Oscar®-nominated long term collaborator John Hodge (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting) is a seductive and enigmatic thriller starring James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson.
Fine art auctioneer Simon (McAvoy), in league with a gang led by underworld boss Franck (Cassel), plots the audacious theft of a masterpiece by Goya from a major public auction. When Simon double-crosses the gang during the robbery, Franck retaliates violently and knocks him unconscious.
In the aftermath of the heist, Simon sticks stubbornly – and perhaps shrewdly – to his claim that the violent trauma has left him with no memory of where he stashed the artwork.
Unable to coerce the painting’s location from Simon, Franck and his associates reluctantly join forces with a charismatic hypnotherapist (Dawson) in a bid to get him to talk. But as they journey deeper into Simon’s jumbled psyche the boundaries between reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur and the stakes rise faster and far more dangerously than any of the players could have anticipated.