Based on a novel by Japanese-born British author Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go is an intelligent science fiction story that steadfastly refuses to obey genre rules and instead plays out as the high-
toned literary adaptation it is.

The film is set in an alternate version of England during the 1970s through to the 1990s, a country in which most major diseases have been banished via a social mechanism that only gradually becomes clear. Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley play pupils at a very strict but undeniably strange boarding school. It takes a while to figure out the truth of their situation but discover it they eventually do.

The casting is first-rate (Charlotte Rampling plays the girls’ strict headmistress) and the scenario powerful and thought-provoking. At first the film’s subtlety works in its favour by lending it an enigmatic creepiness. In the longer term, however, it tends to stifle the drama. Mark Romenek’s cautious direction is one cause, but you can also blame characters who too often surrender to their preordained fates – they have little to do dramatically other than act out a conventional lovers’ triangle (Andrew Garfield plays the linchpin). Only when the girls team up does the...