Remember Me

Allen Coulter’s film is a father and son drama dressed as a romance. Tyler stopped speaking to his father after his older brother’s suicide. Meeting Ally is not innocent either: after he and his roommate Aidan are arrested, Aidan proposes revenge on Detective Neil Craig through his daughter. You watch the sweet first half knowing what Tyler is up to. Will Fetters began the screenplay in 2004, at twenty two, and says the ending was never bolted on later: the whole film was built around the anger and grief left by September 11. Summit sold it as a Nicholas Sparks romance in the register of Dear John, and Fetters concedes that hurt it. The 16 million dollar production still took 19 million in North America and 56 million worldwide. Coulter came out of television. He directed twelve episodes of The Sopranos, among them the much cited College, and his only previous feature was Hollywoodland. Robert Pattinson is credited among the producers. The film withholds its date until the closing minutes, so a second viewing turns the same scenes into something else. A good fit if you accept Caroline’s bullying at school and the reckoning with the father taking as much room as the romance. Not for viewers who cannot accept a real catastrophe used to weight one invented death.