STAY

Year: 2005
USA & UK: Twentieth Century Fox
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Janeane Garofalo, B D Wong, Bob Hoskins, Kate Burton, Michael Gaston, Elizabeth Reaser, Mark Margolis, Janeane Garofalo, John Tormey, Jose Ramon Rosario, Becky Ann Baker, Lisa Kron, Gregory Mitchell, John Dominici, Jessica Hecht, Sterling K Brown, Amy Sedaris, Michael Devine, Jolly Abraham, Mary Testa, Angela Pietropinto, Oni Faida Lampley, Jarlath Conroy, Michael Gaston, Noah Bean, Isaach De Bankole, G A Aguilar, Riley G. Matthews Jr, Vito Violante, Douglas Crosby, Blaise Corrigan, Hank Eulau, Mam Smith, Caroline Leppanen, Joan Chiang, Ron DeJesus, Carolyn Dorfman, Emily Gayeski, Noel MacDuffie, Kevin Osgood, Elizabeth H Parkinson, Karine Plantadit-Bageot, John Selya, Kyle Sheldon, Tom Titone, Pamela B Wagner
Director: Marc Forster
Country: USA
USA & UK: 98 mins
USA Rated: R for language and some disturbing images
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, bloody images and references to suicide
USA Release Date: 21 October 2005
UK Release Date: 3 March 2006


Synopsis

In the space between desire and fear, between reality and illusion, between life and death lies a whole other alternate world that is brought to life in the mind-bending thriller STAY. From the acclaimed director of the award-winning MONSTER'S BALL and FINDING NEVERLAND, Marc Forster, comes this moving and mesmerizing double story that plunges beneath the surface of ordinary experience to take a man on a spiraling descent through the mysteries of identity, dreams and the very fabric of existence.

STAY appears at face value to be the suspenseful story of dedicated New York psychiatrist Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) and his urgent attempt to stop a secretive and unusual young patient he inherited, Henry Lethem (Ryan Gosling), from carrying out a planned suicide on the eve of his 21st birthday. But behind the primary tale of STAY lies a far more unsettling and surreal mystery: that of the reality shattering effect that investigating Henry starts to have on Sam. As Sam is drawn deeper into the web of Henry's life - and then into the labyrinth of his subconscious - at first it simply puts stress on Sam's relationship with his artist girlfriend and former patient Lila (Naomi Watts). But soon Sam's own tightly held grip on the rational world begins to melt away. Faced with increasingly surreal encounters and a Manhattan transformed into a wildly shifting dreamscape, Sam can no longer figure out what is true and what is happening only in his head, nor where he begins and Henry ends.

So just who is Henry Lethem and why is he fracturing Sam's reality so profoundly?

As clues and suspense simultaneously build to the story's climax on the Brooklyn Bridge, both Sam - and the audience - must grapple with thought-provoking questions about perception, awareness, forgiveness and final moments of redemption. For it soon becomes clear that what is happening to Sam and Henry is taking place not in this world but in the twilight state between living and dying . . . a place where no one can stay for long.