Ewan's imagination runs wild

Ewan McGregor in Stay
Nina Caplan|Metro10 April 2012

If Marc Forster's last film, Finding Neverland, was a sweet meditation on the power of imagination, Stay is its grown-up, psychotic cousin.

An odd combination of flashy, MTV-style visual tricks and existential gloom, it's bracketed by a horrific car crash on Brooklyn Bridge.

In between, psychiatrist Sam (Ewan McGregor) pants up and down stairwells, trying to stop suicidal art student Henry (Ryan Gosling) from killing himself.

As he does so, the men's identities begin to merge and we cross the line from conscious to subconscious. Or something.

To be honest, about halfway through this pretentious thriller (a character called Athena quoting Hamlet? Did Hollywood learn nothing from the Matrix sequels?), you cease to care, merely wondering idly why McGregor's tweedy professor can't afford a pair of trousers that fit.

Stay
Cert: 15

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