One morning, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) wakes up in his New York apartment feeling a bit under the weather (we’ll find out why later). Heading in to work, at the train station he decides to skip work and take the train out to the seaside at Montauk instead. Why he should do this is unclear; it is, after all, winter, and the beach is covered with snow. No one else is there except one woman, Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), also wandering aimlessly along the beach. He sees here again at the train station when he returns to New York, and on the train she strikes up a conversation with him. Ultimately, they start a relationship …

… again.

Seems that they already broke up, once, and each of them hired a New York firm to erase memories of each other from their minds. Most of this very interesting (and, to me, enjoyable) film follows a backflash story showing technicians from the firm (Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo) spending the night in Joel’s flat erasing his memories, while Joel, trapped in his own mind and realizing that the whole thing is a very bad idea, struggles fruitlessly (or almost fruitlessly) to fight back. This is rendered somewhat easier by the fact that Wood and Ruffalo (or, more precisely, their characters) are unprofessional twits, who are more worried about their sex lives (Wood has a thing for Clementine; Ruffalo is more taken with administrative assistant Kirsten Dunst, who, however, yearns for their mutual boss, Tom Wilkinson; this business is not only at the cutting edge of technology, it is incredibly sleazy, which some may feel is pretty much the same thing …).

Ultimately, the story is about love ― what is it? Hormones? A set of memories that can be zapped? Or something deeper and harder to get rid of? Carrey and Kruczynski may have the answer ― but, unlike in the film, the evidence isn’t all in yet.

Anyway, I enjoyed it.