Never Let Me Go unwinds like cerebral sci-fi. There’s no reliance on ray guns or time travel, instead we concentrate on an unworldly sense of existential dread. There’s a quiet desperation to the characters on display that seems to bleed onto the screen.

Never Let Me Go stars three of today’s hottest young actors: Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley. The story comes from the highly regarded 2024 novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro. The direction by Mark Romanek could kindly be called austere. Romanek projects visions of loneliness, suggested through sparse production design, specific dominant colors and the fact that the protagonists have no place to run even though its evident their lives are in danger.

As the story unfolds we meet the characters as children. The sci-fi element is brought to light when we discover, early on, that the kiddies are clones. They live together in a community environment with mysterious boundaries.

Never Let Me Go then moves to their adult life. After being used to harvest organs twice or thrice they have provided their service to society and are put to rest. They cling to a false idea that if they can prove their love for each other they can extend their life cycle. Making events more eerie than they need to be the tale is set in the 1970s though the 1990s.

Never Let Me Go succeeds primarily because of the performances of the lead actors. Mulligan displays an ability to state emotions just by thinking of them. The seriousness with which everything unfolds never allows Never Let Me Go to stoop to mere sentimentality.

- Michael Bergeron