Never Let Me Go (2010)

Starring: Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley, Charlotte Rampling, Sally Hawkins, Isobel Meikle-Small, Charlie Rowe, Ella Purnell,

Directed by: Mark Romanek

Rating:

The year is 1978, the setting the drab walls of a strict boarding school called Hailsham House. But this is not the '70s as we know it, nor is this any normal educational establishment. For the fresh-faced, cleanly scrubbed pupils have a distinct destiny mapped out for them: they are being reared as organ donors.

Like The Island crossed with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, this unusual tale overlays a chilling sci-fi premise with a moving coming of age tale, as we follow the short lives of three Hailsham pupils, Cathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley), whose complex relationship begins when they are aged around ten.

In this coldly scientific yet nostalgically familiar re-imagined Britain, the children accept their unnatural fates with calm resignation. It is, after all, what they have been bred for.

With no requirement to earn a living, once they leave school, the donors are left to live quiet, secluded lives, which would be comfortable were it not for the in-built knowledge that they are second-class citizens, existing merely to supply spare parts for the 'real' population, all the while waiting for the abrupt and painful 'completion' to their journey, at an age when life may only just be beginning for the people they save.

With no careers, little interaction with the outside world and not future to speak of, the trio have only one thing to cling to: love. But as we all know, three's a crowd, and self-centred, insecure Ruth ensures that she's not the one left alone, denying Cathy and Tommy the chance to be together.

The narrow lives led by the central protagonists do at times make the film seem a little slight, a sad and somewhat predictable tale of a love that could never be – until a flash of a manacled identity bracelet or glimpse of a livid scar reminds us that this is anything but a typical romance.

And so the oft-told love triangle tale is transformed into a thought-provoking essay on what it means to be human, and how we can give our short time on this earth meaning. Do any of us really live our lives to the full, or feel that we have enough time? Sober thoughts, inspired by a sober, low key, beautifully performed and mournfully moving film. As the title suggest, Never Let Me Go does indeed prove difficult to forget.