Remainder

A man, a black, wheeled suitcase, a street. Suddenly an object falls out of the sky, hits the man on the head and puts him into a coma. Shortly after he comes round, he discovers that he is 8.5 million pounds richer – hush money, his lawyer says. But for what? This nameless protagonist, played by Tom Sturridge, has no memory of the time prior to the accident, anyway. Israeli video artist Omer Fast’s first feature-length film is an adaptation of the debut novel by Tom McCarthy, with whom Fast also collaborated on the screenplay. The result is a brutal, somnambulistic game of deception involving truth and dreams. Are the images that increasingly haunt the protagonist – of a redbrick house, a boy, and a woman in a headscarf – real memories? Why is there a strange smell in the house? Able to do as he pleases as a result of his large windfall, and bereft of all scruples, he hires a capable accomplice called Naz who organises actors to re-enact his vague and rare ‘flashbacks’. Every detail must be perfect, right down to the number of black cats on the roof. Gradually, increasingly violent images creep into the surreal world of the protagonist...