Le patient

The Lost Patient is an incorrect translation. The film is called The Patient in French. This is a French language and French film. Normally I am skeptical of cohesion in French films - but this one had me on my toes from the get go. The writers and the director are firing on all cylinders.

Thomas is the central character. He is the only living witness to a gruesome mass murder of his family. He barely survived himself.

Flash forward three years and Thomas is coming out of a coma. But something isn't right about him. He is seeing a psychiatrist and physical therapist but something is off.

The story is told via therapy sessions and flashbacks that Thomas has.

It's gripping stuff and as someone who knows from having lived through similar, this is a very realistic and well done thriller.

The ending is worth the wait.

No pun intended - also is not the past that forms us? That has made us the person we are today? Of course if something terrible and quite life altering has happened ... shouldn't we try to deal with it? And this is exactly what is going on here. I would not say that the movie has a twist for me towards the end, though you may feel different. I just know that the movie is well told and well acted.

If you had a trauma and your mind does not want to remember - well what to do? The thriller part of this is nice I reckon, but you can tell it was made for tv I reckon ... seen worse though - but this could have been tighter pacing wise. Still a nice movie overall (no pun intended here either)

As this French drama opens a family is found massacred in their home. Three years later nineteen year old survivor Thomas awakes from a coma. The psychologist caring for him tells him that he is the sole survivor and that his sister hasn't been seen since those events. She encourages him to try to remember just what happened while he is also undergoing physiotherapy. Gradually he, and we, learn just what happened that day.

I thought this was a decent drama. It is fairly slow burn and doesn't provide as many surprises as I suspects its makers think. I'm sure most viewers will have suspected how it will end long before the 'big reveal'. That said it managed to keep me interested throughout. The cast is solid, especially Txomin Vergez, who plays Thomas. There is a good atmosphere with limited settings giving it an almost theatrical feel at times. Overall a solid enough film; not a must see but worth a watch if you are a fan of French films.

These comments are based on watching the film in French with English subtitles.

This is an immersive film. You relate with Thomas as he tries to put the pieces together when he wakes up from coma. It's a slow burn but you don't mind because the story brings you somewhere and you want to be there when it ends even if it feels the story is going around in circles. And the ethereal musical score adds to the befuddlement.

This is a story that tackles how the brain creates or distorts reality specially when one undergoes trauma. In the case of Thomas, he has to figure out which events are real and which are augmented or constructed.

Txomin Vergez is credible as Thomas as he succeeds in portraying his situation. Rebecca Williams is equally convincing as Laura.

This is a thought-provoking film. It might be good for your mental health.

A family is brutally murdered and the son wakes up after a long coma. And then tries to find the truth what happend in this night with the help of a psychiatrist. The story is not terrible even when we have seen these twists before. What kills this movie is the unbearable slow pace. Everything takes forever. What I see more and more is that todays film makers obviously don´t know the difference between slow burn and simply boring. And this movie is so boring that I started to stream forward just to find out what happend. So for me the movie was only 30 minutes and this was okay. But the hour long sequences of going from one place to the other, staring at walls and so on, were just needless and tiring filler material.