Spoiler: There is no title drop in Strike Pictures’ Do I Know You From Somewhere? Yes, gasp in shock. I waited for it, too. Sometimes, though, it is the words unspoken that stay with us the longest.
Before jumping into the film, I’d like to discuss The Twilight Zone episode “The After Hours,” specifically its 1985 remake. Marsha Cole, played by Terry Farrell, arrives at the mall just as it’s closing. The young woman shares with a store employee that the past month has been wonderful for her: she managed to land an apartment despite having no money, and her landlord even helped her get a job. To thank her landlord, she’s buying a doll for the landlord’s child.
In classic Twilight Zone fashion, however, Marsha’s life is not what it seems — she’s, in fact, a mannequin.
The illusion of Marsha’s happy life shatters when the store employee presses her for details about her past. Marsha scoffs at the idea that she wouldn’t know where she grew up, yet she can’t remember anything beyond the last month. She is pursued by a mannequin through the mall, with others calling her name, as if beckoning her home. Her dream life dissolves into a bittersweet memory when Marsha turns back into a mannequin, her limbs hardening into plastic while she struggles to accept the truth.
Which brings us to Do I Know You From Somewhere?, a surrealist drama from director Arianna Martinez and co-writer Gordon Mihan, which premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.
No, Olive (Caroline Bell) and Benny (Ian Ottis Goff) are not mannequins. Olive is a woman frantically searching the house for a misplaced anniversary gift. On a phone call with her sister Stella (Gillian Salmon), Olive struggles to remember what exactly the gift is — just like Marsha struggles to remember her life beyond a month ago. Meanwhile, in his workshop, Benny finds a plush rabbit, one that seems to have appeared out of nowhere.
Nowhere — that is where Olive and Benny find themselves: alone and disoriented by lapses in memory. In a series of flashbacks, the film drifts back to the wedding reception where they first met. Benny is working his first shift as a banquet server; Olive is drunk, sad, and alone. Their tethers to reality begin to fray when a mysterious woman named Ada (Mallory Amirault) starts replacing Benny in Olive’s memories. Outside, where leaves once fell and the water once ran, there is only a void.
There is an air of something sinister afoot, much like the foreboding mall from “The Afterhours.” Who is this phantom woman? Are Olive and Benny dead? Is Ada responsible for plunging the couple in metaphysical darkness?
No.
Olive is real. Benny is not. That’s the twist, simplified. Everyone is real. Some are more real than others. In truth, Olive and Ada are in a committed relationship. Benny is just a face in the crowd. On the night of the wedding reception, Olive never spoke with Benny. It was Ada who briefly humored Olive’s spiel on breakups before whisking her away. The Benny we know exists only as a product of desire and indecision. But what if Olive had spoken with Benny and built a life with him? What would that life have looked like, had she made that choice instead?
Benny is like a department store mannequin: a fantasy, a compelling narrative manufactured by desire.
Most of the film exists in this dream space, where past and present clash, forming two alternating timelines. It is a breakup story, though not of any one breakup. Olive spills her heart to Benny at the wedding reception, telling him:
“Have you ever been through a breakup before, Benny? They’re all a little different, but at the end of the day, they’re basically the same. One moment, someone is in your life—the most important person you’ve ever met. And then, the next moment, poof—they’re gone.”
“The relationship—okay, the glue that holds people together—it’s scrubbed away. It’s not just like something’s been erased. It’s like the life you lived together was just a dream. So, you start to forget the little details. It becomes this blanket memory. Even that’s a little fuzzy. It just gets fuzzier and fuzzier until it’s less of a blanket and more of a fuzzy, fuzzy thing that sits quietly in the back of your mind.”
Benny is an amalgamation of breakups past.
Near the end of the film, as the Ada timeline fully manifests, Olive is seen crying alone in what was her and Benny’s home. In this timeline, she lives with Ada and their daughter, Cece. The house is warmly decorated for Cece’s birthday. Olive sobs almost uncontrollably as her psychic connection to Benny—or at least the concept of him—is severed. The Ada timeline takes over, and Olive settles, happily, into the world around her.
There are three milestones celebrated over the course of the film: first, Olive and Benny’s anniversary; second, a wedding; and lastly, Cece’s birthday. These snapshots reflect Olive’s mind in some way.
Olive and Benny’s relationship is fiction, informed by previous relationships. The anniversary is one of those “fuzzy things” that sits in the back of Olive’s mind. One moment, she can’t wait to give Benny her present; the next, the details of that gift and everything it represents have been forgotten. The wedding overwhelms Olive, her heart still raw from a recent breakup. She drinks to numb herself, trying not to dwell on the life that was and could have been. The details are too fresh. In much the same way, Cece’s birthday conjures an immense sadness in Olive. Again, it is this mourning for what could have been — the topic of children a point of tension between Olive and Benny.
Like Marsha in “The After Hours,” Olive lives a dreamlike existence, caught between memory and reality. A lingering desire within her splinters her mind, taking shape in Benny, a chorus of possibility and longing. The drama of the film emerges as much from words spoken as from moments never shared. There is no grand sinister plot, nor any malevolent force operating in the shadows; it is regret that sustains the dream space in which Olive finds herself, and acceptance that ultimately pulls her toward a new life.
Arianna Martinez’s debut feature film, Do I Know You From Somewhere?, evokes the spirit of classic anthology science fiction. Take that as you will. Caroline Bell steps comfortably into her feature film debut. She capably carries the weight of the film’s kaleidoscopic storytelling, while Ian Ottis Goff brings a strong “everyman” quality to help anchor the heightened, surreal elements. Beneath its ambitious scale, Do I Know You From Somewhere? resonates as a poignant, dreamlike journey through memory and desire.
Do I Know You From Somewhere? is available to watch on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and YouTube Movies.
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