by MATTHEW HAYS

It is an undoubtedly haunting story. In 1998, in the early morning hours after Montreal’s massive Black & Blue circuit party benders, a man awoke in an alley, in the buff, with no memory of who he was or where he came from. He knew only one thing: that he was gay. Eventually, after a long media campaign, family members from the southern U.S. would identify him accurately.

The story was so strange that it captured widespread media attention, from The New York Times to The Advocate to A Current Affair. And with two Montreal movies inspired by the incident, it threatens to become a local cinematic cottage industry.

The first was 2003’s Saved by the Belles, in which the amnesiac is taken in by a drag queen and a party girl. That film chose whimsy over substance. Now, Denis Langlois (L’Escorte) has written and directed Amnesia: The James Brighton Enigma, a valiant and mostly successful effort to explain (through Langlois’s own fictional imagination) what precisely led to the amnesiac’s traumatic memory loss.

Langlois handles the set-up well, managing to avoid sensationalism while keeping the basic premise true to what actually occurred. And the writer-director has also assembled a solid cast, something entirely necessary with such delicate material. Dusan Dukic is adept at playing a handsome young man with a blank slate for a personality; he subtly conveys the confusion and frustration that amnesia of this kind might bring on. (The film steers away from any foul-play theories, taking Brighton on his word that he had no real memory of his past.)

Langlois arrives at an intriguing theory as to Brighton’s memory loss. If Amnesia has one flaw, it’s the screenwriting device of having the story told via a journalist who attempts to piece the mystery together a few years later. It’s not necessary—this tale is strong enough to stand on its own. But this is a minor quibble. Amnesia is a highly engrossing take on an unforgettable Montreal story.

AMNESIA OPENS FRIDAY, SEPT. 30

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