Director Danny Boyle was in a peculiar and unlikely situation with his upcoming mind-bending heist movie “Trance.” He wasn’t able to see the film until months after he shot it, because the movie wrapped with Boyle going on to work on the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He then picked up with what had been shot more than six months later. “We didn’t anticipate [the advantage to editing after the fact] at the time and there’s always a danger that it’s not favorable,” Boyle said. “We were very lucky to do it. Most filmmakers don’t get a chance to put a film on ice. I was a bit concerned… but when we went to go watch the rough cut after the Olympics, it was like, weird. I couldn’t remember what was coming next.”
This was exactly the kind of perspective that Boyle was hoping for with a twisty and complicated thriller. “As a director, you know too much all the time,” he said. “So it was very useful to have that refresher course and the impact of the story the first time you see it, so it was a big help.”
Starring James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassell, “Trance” is mainly a three-hander. And while the filmmakers have kept a lot of its secret locked away in treasure chests, they are slowly reeling in audiences with hooks and baits. Here’s the synopsis:
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.
“Trance” is due in the U.K. early on March 27th and lands in the U.S. on April 5th in limited release. A new behind-the-scenes featurette, TV spot and images from the film are below. [Photos via Movies]