movie review - Palm Springs
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a movie about a young woman who becomes trapped in a "Groundhog Day" daily time loop. It happens when she follows a man she's met at a wedding as he runs from an unseen assailant who's been hitting the man with arrows. She follows him into a cave - against his warnings - and winds up back at the previous morning.
What follows is a period of who-knows-how-long in which she makes a kind of peace with the situation, spending every day with the fellow as they go through the day of the wedding once again. He's been in the time loop for a very long time, so long that he can't remember what he once did for a living prior to this nightmare. It's only when he lets slip that they had slept together "a thousand times" before he got into the loop that she realizes he's so far gone in his private hell and has become so incapable of thinking of others that she realizes she's heading for a similar fate and decides to do something about it.
This movie doesn't tell the story as I have, rather telling it more from the male lead's viewpoint. Only, it's not really his story. It's only when she enters the loop that things begin to change, and it's she who resolves it. And I don't know if there was a problem with the editing or the filming (or the personalities?) but there's something not right with this thing. Everyone has this look like they're not enjoying themselves, even K.K. Simmons who can seem to get into anything. There are a also few loose ends in this movie that are not resolved, and it's not in a good way. It's like there were sub-stories intended but then chopped for whatever reason.
In any event, I enjoyed the fact that there was no moral exit code (the heroine tries that immediately) and no purpose to the loop. But I didn't feel good watching this thing and I wasn't satisfied with the whole.
Not recommended.