What makes this movie for me is the sincere positive emotions it carries. It is a movie with heart, sincerity.

Yet, it is a rather melancholic film. The tone sits between deep sadness and triumphant wholesomeness.

It is about loneliness and people trying desperately to find their better half. It starts a typical romantic movie, the boy-meets-girl type. But, there is something a little off. And, as the story progresses you come to realize that the film has multiple layers on top of each other, and in a very Kaufmanesque fashion it becomes a story within a story within a story.

In a very clever way, the film tells the story of Joel and Clementine in reverse. And the whole movie is the unwrapping of it. That is why the beginning feels random and weird, without being neccessarily off-putting. The whole movie has a slight weirdness that is gives a dreamlike quality to the story. It elevates a rather mundane romance to a more whimsical tale of invariable love. No matter what, they always end up together.

At the core, the movie tells the Joel and Clementine's romance but practically it spends a lot of time on a fictional memory-removal service's office. I enjoyed very much how it presents this whimsical memory technology in a very matter of fact way. There is a quiet routine to it: getting your memories erased is a service you pay for. It is procedure. It is like going to the dentist. Its filled with technicians and support staff that are morons.

And to be fair, the movie almost goes so far into the banality of this practice it almost becomes sinister. The whole sequence with Mark Ruffalo in Joel's apartment verges on uncomfortable and creepy. But, the movie escapes the unease by doing yet again a nested story, where it plunges the story in another story: the romance between Dr. Mierzwiak and Kristen Dunst.

It completely caught me off guard. And again, it results in a love-story told from the end. But, it wraps the plot in a nice bow. The film presents two main love-stories, one that has failed and one that has endured, both in spite of the memory removal. The contrast is also visual: where the first love story is told extensively in various colorful flashbacks, the Dunst love-story is told in the office; it is cold, it is static. Ultimately, the juxtaposition of the two stories, creates a deeper meaning.

The movie is very good on all accounts, the directing, the acting, the visuals. But, it really gets these elements working together to tell the story. Only while writing this, did I realize how intricate the story is. Yet, the film makes it clear and simple. The movie is eloquent yet it is very ethereal, it feels like a dream. At times, it threatens to turn into a nightmare, but at the end it reveals itself to be a nice, comfy, sweet dream.