Mark Reviews Movies: THE ALMOND AND THE SEAHORSE

The Almond and the Seahorse, IFC Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 15, 2022

Two of the main characters in The Almond and the Seahorse are trapped in the past because of neurological issues. Another two are stuck there, as well, because each of them loves and has decided to care for a person with anterograde amnesia, an inability to make new memories. Kaite O'Reilly and co-director/co-star Celyn Jones' screenplay presents both of these states as seemingly unending tragedies, which is accurate, to be sure, but, in part because of the split perspective, not convincingly dramatic.

O'Reilly, adapting her play, and Jones, who also plays one of the characters afflicted with amnesia, try to observe this condition from a variety of perspectives. That's admirable and, in certain scenes, upsetting in completely different ways. We witness the terrible cycle of forgetting that constitutes the lives of the amnesiac characters, but we also see the constant strain of trying to be there for someone who might mentally disappear without warning, only to return with no sense of what has just occurred—or even what has happened over the course of years.

When the movie focuses on the intrinsic horror and deep pain of this condition for those who suffer from it and for their loving caretakers, it possesses no small amount of sympathy. Jones and co-director Tom Stern never go deeper than that, though, partly because the whole thing falls into a sense of repetition but mostly because the screenplay never determines how to dramatize the effects of this condition without resorting to melodrama.

We meet two couples dealing with amnesia and its effects (The title refers to the amygdala and the hippocampus, two parts of the brain responsible for memory, as well as their general shapes). The first is made up of Sarah (Rebel Wilson), an archeologist, and her husband Joe (Jones), who had a benign tumor removed from his brain a few years ago. As a result of the surgery, Joe's brain lost its capacity to make new memories, and when the story begins, his condition seems to be worsening. Standing in front of the refrigerator one night after Sarah returns home from staying late at work, Joe suddenly forgets that he opened the fridge, got something to drink, and had been talking to his wife.

The other couple consists of Toni (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), who have been together for a couple decades. Every morning, Toni wakes up early to fix her hair and apply some lotion, because her girlfriend awakens each day believing it is 15 years prior. The ritual, it seems, is to give Gwen some initial comfort, if only because there's an inevitable shock of seeing an unexpectedly older Toni and, upon looking in the mirror, herself aged with no recollection of the years having passed.

This setup is quite simple, and that is rightly so. The difficulties of this condition, as well as the struggles of these romantic partners trying to live with and love someone who is unaware of how much has changed, are complex enough.

Most of the early sections of the story simply follow these pairs during their respective daily routines. Toni tries to help Gwen through the terror of feeling as if time has suddenly jumped forward, while becoming exhausted by the emotional drain of doing that every day. Sarah attempts to juggle her own life, primarily her work, and tending to Joe, whose mood sometimes alters with the re-awakening of his awareness. One sequence, which observes as Joe spends a day alone in the apartment and forgets basic or essential things even as he's in the process of doing them, is particularly harrowing, especially as Joe becomes aware that something is wrong—even if he cannot remember what any of those problems are.

In the background, there's Dr. Falmer (Meera Syal), who runs a medical facility devoted to caring for people with traumatic brain injuries. While her role is mostly expositional at first (giving a rundown to visitors of the facility about amnesia), it becomes apparent that either she or the clinic will figure into these split stories more. There's an unfortunate transparency of that contrivance early on, particularly because there simply isn't much for these four main characters to do or reveal once the pattern of their lives is established and re-established.

The repetition leaves these four, especially Joe and Gwen, with little to nothing to do. When Toni and Sarah eventually decide that caring for their respective partner is too much, they meet, too. While there's an initial frankness to how neither character wants pity and how both know too much about living around this condition to offer it, the actual nature of their relationship suddenly evolves and almost as suddenly deteriorates off-screen in a way that makes the connection feel as distanced as it is contrived.

In general, The Almond and the Seahorse falls into that narrative trap, too. The third act here feels calculated toward arriving at some sense of the bittersweet, regardless of what has happened to these characters and what will continue to happen to them beyond the manipulative ending.

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