This film falls short to deliver a Twilight Zoneesque feel. Unless you're a Jungian or are familiar with Fred Hoyle and anything psychological or science for that matter, then this film will pass over your head. Love the noir atmosphere but the characters aren't believable in telling a noir style story. Chase Masterson is incredibly talented and gorgeous,and makes an attempt to be Virgil and walk Kipleigh Brown through a scientific Dante's Inferno. If this film were a student project for an astrophysics class, then it would have succeeded. Unfortunately it was presented as an actual film at Cannes. As a lover of science fiction, especially Twilight Zone and Star Trek I delve into this film expecting for a great deal of human factor drama and a blend of 1950's murder mystery and suspense. Instead I received a puzzle with pieces that are missing. If you watch this film research Fred Hoyle or read October First Is Too Late or keep the Sixth Sense and Dante's Inferno in mind.

I had very low hopes for this movie, and it managed to fall below even those.Short form, if you've seen other films noir, you've seen this one, except done better. If you've seen a lot of film noir, you've seen everything in this one, because it seems to be little more than a visual mash-up of what's been done before.That in itself is bad enough, but the acting and the writing are atrocious. If you saw Super 8, at the end of the film you get the see the project film that all the kids are working on throughout the movie. "Yesterday was a Lie" is very slightly better than that. Given that the writer is also the director, and based on the fact that every performance is flat and fails to engage, I think the direction must also be at fault.There is philosophy to be found here. I would urge you to read up on mysticism and physics (particularly quantum mechanics) instead of spending your time on this movie. You'll learn a lot more, and in the end you will have spent your time more wisely.

I had been waiting for quite a while for Yesterday was a lie. Modern noir is rare and I hadn't seen anything of note since 2005's Brick. Despite going into the film with high hopes, Yesterday was a lie fell short of it's mark. Their seemed to be such an heavy emphasis on the stylistic elements of the classic noir film that it over did it. From the swanky Jazz to the high-contrast black and white, it all was just too much. This over-the-top noir style seemed to ease by about the halfway point of the film which helped. The character Hoyle, with her hair flowing out from under her Fadora wasn't believable. Hoyle along with the singer, played excellently by Chase Masterson, were easily confused since both were so close in appearance. Since this was a movie about moving backwards and forwards through time, one was left wondering if Hoyle and the Singer were meant to be the same person. Also, noir works when we see that point when the main character either makes a bad decision of has one thrust upon them. That is the turning point of a great story. This story didn't seem to have that. If it did, it was lost, relying on sexy women and dress to carry the day. Also this film missed the mark in great dialog. One usually hopes for those great comeback lines and expressions (that we all wished we had said) to carry these films. All and all the acting was fine but this film failed in the directing and editing. It was fun to see the effort but this fell short of it's mark.

I saw this together with "Conversation(s) with other women." Both try something ambitious with narrative structure, extending notions I call folding.Here we have something that starts with noir — and by that I mean noir in the popular sense: black and white photography, a hard-boiled detective, some voice-over and seedy settings. These are only accidentally associated with noir in my mind; the real core of noir is the creation of a world that has features we as viewers expect and to some extent control. This filmmaker understands this, so has used noir for his narrative experiment.The experiment revolves around a science fiction device: a notebook with some secrets of Quantum Interaction. The backstory has experiments that use repetitive number patterns to allow a researcher to start to bend time. Two lovers have faded in their love. She is a detective put on a case that leads them to this notebook. He engages in the experiment to recapture their love at the cost of his soul. The story is told from her POV, which involves non-linearity in three respects: what we see and understand, what she sees and understands, what is understandable (in the sense of the physics changing). This last is to the heart of noir, where the act of seeing changes the cosmos.Her cat is named Schrödinger. She has a doppelganger (her sexy female anima), played by a woman who dominates: she is a muse/teacher. She literally is the producer of the film, and she provides some competent moody songs. All of the actors are people we should know from various, mostly bad TeeVee, science fiction. It is all rather brilliant in the way it is conceived and worth seeing because of the ambition.The problems are many though. The actual narrative, those threads you weave out of the fragments you are given? It just is poorly done. This needs more power in the actors, the lines and the cinema. It references urges that can bend the world. Polanski does this and delivers. "Ninth Gate." There is no there here. You may not notice this because it is easy enough to supply that romantic urge: we all have it and have nurtured it in our movie experiences. We carry it into this project and can plug in, indirectly increasing the narrative effect.So that is not a lethal problem. The other problem may not bother you, but it worries me greatly.This experiment relies on some detailed explanations of the "science" involved. As with many popular-level notions, we have selections from the most accessible and attractive features of Jungian cosmology mixed in with common misconceptions of quantum physics. It plays the same role in this story that mentioning a recent meteorite has in zombie movies. You nod, agree that the explanation is plausible and move on to consume the narrative.The problem is both Jung and QI have possibilities that are much more powerful than those appropriated here. You can't start fire with water just because on screen it looks like gasoline. And you don't need all that folderol (good word) anyway. "Conversation(s) with other women" does much the same thing as here, but without the guff. Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.