TIFF24 REVIEW: Do I Know You From Somewhere? [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 79 minutes
Director(s): Arianna Martinez
Writer(s): Arianna Martinez & Gordon Mihan

My wish was already granted.

It starts with a gift. Or the memory of one. Olive (Caroline Bell) knows she got Benny (Ian Ottis Goff) something—she’s just not sure where she put it, what it says, what it is, and, finally, that there was ever even something to remember. Is she losing it? Maybe. But then why does Benny begin to see and feel strange things too? His experience is additive. Hers is subtractive. And then suddenly he’s gone. To where? Not even he knows.

The disorientation is a feature, not a bug. Arianna Martinez’s Do I Know You From Somewhere? (co-written by her husband Gordon Mihan) isn’t supposed to make sense. At least not yet. Because Olive and Benny are just as confused as we are. So much so that they begin to use one of the unexplainable anomalies (letter magnets on the fridge that aren’t theirs) to help find some answers. Doing so only creates more questions, though, since focusing on that which doesn’t belong inevitably anchors it to reality.

That’s when the flashback memories commence. First it’s the two of them recalling the day they met. Then it’s blurry figures standing in the corner of the frames behind them becoming sharper and clearer until we start getting flashbacks of them. It makes sense in the grander scope of the whole, but boy does pivoting off of Olive and Benny to follow Ada (Mallory Amirault) instead really snap you out of the trance Martinez had been weaving. I get wanting to add layers through other characters, but this isn’t their story to tell.

We recognize this as soon as Benny spells out things they mustn’t forget only to include himself but not Olive. Why? Because there’s no threat of forgetting her when everything we see is a product of her vision. Except that scene with Ada working. Olive wasn’t there. I guess she could have heard what happened, but the shift in perspective is one that doesn’t quite gel with the whole. Neither do the brief moments of Benny alone once the curtain is drawn to expose how he too isn’t there. Not really.

But he kind of is too? That’s the trick with movies dealing in multiple timelines (this is very much a multiverse script in the sense of a “what if” scenario rather than literal alternate dimensions, although one must imagine every possible outcome has its own dimension anyway so the distinction isn’t as important as you might assume). Vantage is key because it tells us who is aware and I’m not sure Benny should be regardless of whether allowing him the opportunity makes for a more coherent and impactful piece.

And when there are so many interesting questions being asked on-screen, allowing us to ask our own off of it only muddies the water. It’s an aesthetic choice, though. Martinez decides the pivot from Olive as sole orchestrator is worth the convolution. Maybe she’s right too. Maybe it actually does make sense when you watch it a few more times and break everything down. I’ll admit that it makes enough now to allow the ending an effective bit of poignancy. Maybe even enough to forget I had an issue in the first place.

So, I’ll definitely applaud the work—qualms or not. It’s clunky and stagy but has a massive amount of heart and pathos to compensate. It helps that Bell (in her first screen role) and Goff are so endearing. You look past the artifice to unearth a deep-seated love that shouldn’t be able to dissolve as rapidly as it is. Except, of course, that it must. Not because it didn’t happen or shouldn’t happen, but because the alternative demands its erasure. And that option is more. Not better. Not worse. Literally more. And that’s worth the sacrifice both for the one making the choice and the one who’ll never know it was even on the table.