"Till memory do them apart"

Title: The Vow
Year: 2012
Genre: Drama, Romantic
Director: Michael Sucsy
Writer: Jason Katims, Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (written by), Stuart Sendler (story)
Runtime: 104min
Reparto: Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum, Sam Neill, Jessica Lange, Scott Speedman
Produc.: Screen Gems, Spyglass Entertainment
Budget: $30 million aprox

In The Vow, Leo (Channing Tatum) and Paige (Rachel McAdams) are a happily married young couple, until one night, because of a car accident Paige loses her memory and is unable to recognize her husband. From that moment, Leo must do what ever he has at his reach to get her to remember him, and go back to what they had already built. 

Aside from being the typical romantic movie, The Vow is about what could mean for a person, that given some circunstancies wich where no ones fault, suddenly you were for your soul mate, someone completely unknown. That that person with whom you had decided to share it everything, put you to one side in the blink of an eye, but for reasons that went beyond her own understanding. 

The film reminded me of 50 First Dates (2004) quite a bit, with what I am not saying that it looked like a copy of it, as memory problems suffered in each case are very different. It is the idea of ​​the boyfriend and/or husband who must make her partner love him back, what they share, and that in both is magnificently handled. 

One night, Leo and Paige, fresh from theater, get in their car. On their way home they entertain themselves joking, until Leo stopps at a stoplight. There, Paige becomes affectionate and Leo gets excited. But suddenly, a runaway truck hits them from behind and Rachel is thrown through the windshield, what we see in slow motion, and allows us to appreciate the brutality of her coup. One can even anticipate what is coming after, even while sees her flying through the air, among fragments of shattered glass. 

The director, however, chooses for another way. Leaving us with the question for a few minutes, he uses a flashback to tell us how Leo and Paige had met and hit it off, then marry and read, each their vows, during a museum ceremony. Personally, I would have omitted all that background, except for the marriage, which I would have included, but later. To begin with, because after having us on hold and with even slowed up images of the accident, what one would have liked, would have been to pass directly to the whole "post - clash", with the nursing home admission and the bad news. Michael Sucsy prefers to delay us the awaiting, casting a whole, overly romantic context, that is irrelevant and would probably bore the male audience. Because, actually, how did Paige ended up?, Is what one would like to know, not, how they ended up together. 

The other reason responds to a matter of repetition. Throughout the film Leo is continually striving to help her. With this goal is that he leaves some material in the open view, classified as “evidence” that they really loved each over. However, when Paige sits down to watch the video, it is basically the same wedding that we had already been shown, but now from the viewpoint of one of their friend´s camera. 

Paige awakens from a coma and it is the moment of the truth. Leo updates her on what happened, to what then Paige confuses him with her doctor. It happens that she has forgotten the last five years of her life. Leo had already been warned by Dr. Fishman (Wendy Crewson) on this possibility, of total or partial memory loss, and that could in turn be reflected, in short or long term. Everything, depending on the severity of the brain damage. 

Paige's injury means, amazingly, that she has not only lost all memory of her marriage, and of any aspect in general, from that period of her life. Together, she preserves in her head, and vividly, every memory of her past at her parents' house, before her departure, plus remembers to be committed to Jeremy (Scott Speedman), her old boyfriend. 

In short, memory loss could alienate her from the person whom she loved the most until just a while ago, and work in reverse with respect to her parents, who having lost contact with their daughter, are planning to retrieve her. Bill and Rita Thornton (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange), with whom she had fought even before the accident and did not spoke with. But Paige does not even remember having left the house. For Jeremy (Scott Speedman), on the other hand, memories of that relationship are now fresher than ever. 

That Paige does not recognize Leo is to say that for her, who claims to be her husband is a complete stranger. And how is that suddenly you wake up, for someone you guarantee never to have seen before, says to be attached to you in the strongest of bonds? On top, when you get discharged, that same person intends to take you with him. 

With Bill, Rita and Jeremy in the middle, The Vow becomes a complicated interweaving of existential and loving dilemmas, and the struggle of interests between a poor young unfortunate and three ruthless opponents. Both sides want to win the confidence and affection of a confused Paige, who has no idea of ​​which way to chose. 

As for Paige, the fact of having to assume that she is no longer the girl she remembers, which, in her head, still lives with her parents and wants to study law, is another heavy blow. Having been erased everything about her marriage, she finds it very dificult to worry about not hurting Leo, when he loves her, and instead, again and again, she can no longer be reciprocal. It seems as if it was a constant act of selfishness, but it is not. What happens is that in her mind everything is confusing and she needs to think it over. 

Although Paige is the one who has suffered the worst luck in the impact, it actually becomes easier to sympathize with Leo, and not with her. Because Paige lost her memory, but Leo, his partner. To Paige, everything could even become as simple as returning to her parents and pick it up where she had already left it. But that, for Leo would mean to make a clean slate and start from scratch. 

The Vow invites us to reflect, if we have not already done it, about what is really the meaning of saying yes to that legal, but most of all, sentimental union that is marriage, in both, the good and bad, but especially in the bad, no matter in what field, and even if the other does not know who you are. 

For all of this is that I see no right to say that this film is one of the bunch. It is true that, somehow does meet the same general structure of any romantic flick, although its development, I could say, raises a conflict that has nothing silly, and deserves a close following. 

My rating: 7/10

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