Dry Ice Factory

Like Inception (2010), The Locket is perhaps notable more for its elaborate structure and visual pleasures than for the somewhat banal story it tells. But instead of Inception's dream-within-a-dream structure, The Locket's structure is a flashback-within-a-flashback that goes down three levels, with each flashback from another character's point of view. As with Inception we return to the current time frame level by level, giving closure to each flashback along the way, and the question of closure lingers over this neat narrative gimmick. For one thing, the deeper the flashback, the further the narrative drifts from the person allegedly narrating -- second hand, third hand, fourth hand -- thus raising the question of reliability as well. There is also a murder in one flashback that we're never sure is actually solved. At the center of it all is the femme fatale, Nancy, a kleptomaniac living in a delusional world. Unlike other Freudian movies of the '40s (e.g., Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945)), it's not clear that Nancy's trauma is healed by bringing it to the surface. In fact, the memory only seems to cause further trauma.



( Lotsa screencaps, and a few quotes ... )