Since his feature debut, “Timecrimes” (2008), the Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo has carved out a niche as a reliable purveyor of clever, science-fiction-tinged genre fare that makes few claims to be much more than that. His latest, the likable if plodding “Daniela Forever,” continues in that agreeably unpretentious vein.
Alternating between a retro video format and glossy widescreen to differentiate two parallel realities, the film concerns Nicolas (Henry Golding), a British DJ living in Madrid. In the drab video segments, he is mourning his girlfriend, an Italian artist named Daniela (Beatrice Grannò), after she has been fatally struck by a car.
A friend (Nathalie Poza) invites the grieving Nicolas to participate in a hush-hush clinical trial run by a group of Belgian scientists. They are testing a drug that enables takers to have lucid dreams. But rather than follow the researchers’ exercises, Nicolas uses his lucid dreams — portrayed in the widescreen sections — to resurrect Daniela. Around her, Nicolas builds a world that is superficially suited to her desires but even more suited to his own.
This world unavoidably conjures memories of Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” and Michel Gondry’s “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” antecedents from which Vigalondo does surprisingly little to deviate. (The emptied-out cityscapes look like lo-fi Nolan, and a motif in which Nicolas and Daniela cosplay as a vampire and a shark is pure Gondry.) The philosophical window dressing — would you rather your loved one live a better life if it meant living without you? — doesn’t play to Vigalondo’s strengths.
Daniela Forever
Rated R for a particularly narcissistic bedroom fantasy. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. In theaters.
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