Tears and fears

15

★★

Humans are perishable goods, invisibly inked with a Best Before Date that depends on a 1.5kg supercomputer – the brain. Filmed on location in Liverpool, the Wirral and North Wales, The Almond And The Seahorse takes its intriguing title from nicknames for two parts of that bewilderingly complex organ.

The amygdala and hippocampus are vital to processing emotions and storing memories. If either component malfunctions, the repercussions can be devastating for patients and loved ones left staring into eyes they no longer recognise.

“You can’t see a broken brain,” explains Dr

Falmer (Meera Syal), who runs the Open Field Hospital in New Brighton where victims of traumatic brain injury receive emotional support and full-time residential care.

Archaeologist Sarah (Rebel Wilson) is relatively new to the facility, visiting with her husband Joe (Celyn Jones) who was irrevocably changed two years ago after surgery to remove a large, benign tumour.

She is tormented by a desire to raise a child with the emotionally unpredictable man she still loves.

Retired architect Toni (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has been trapped in a loop for 15 years with her partner, cellist Gwen (Trine Dyrholm), who suffers retrograde amnesia following the car accident that robbed them of their first IVF child.

Adapted from Kaite O’Reilly’s acclaimed 2008 stage play, The Almond And The Seahorse occasionally signals its theatrical origins with unnatural dialogue such as when Dr Falmer assures Toni that everything will look better in the morning and is scolded by the angry retort, “Don’t you have something stronger for the pain than cliches?”

A tear-stained emotional imbalance in favour of Gainsbourg and Dyrholm’s lovebirds becomes increasingly noticeable and the act of comfort that neatly stitches together two storylines feels contrived.

Any fond memories of co-directors Celyn Jones and Tom Stern’s well-intentioned but uneven picture will be fleeting.

The act of comfort that stitches the storylines together feels contrived

TRAUMA Jones and Wilson with, above, Gainsbourg and Dyrholm