OPENING the London Film Festival last Wednesday, expectations were high for Never Let Me Go.

With a screenplay by The Beach author Alex Garland, adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro's best-selling novel, Mark Romanek’s film is an impossibly bleak but achingly haunting story of unrequited love, lost youth and the brevity of life.

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Set in an alternate present day reality, where advances in medicine have eradicated some of the world’s most debilitating illnesses and significantly increased the average life-expectancy, the film centres around three pupils from Hailsham, a seemingly idyllic English boarding school.

The story kicks off in 1978 at the school and follows the adolescent trials and tribulations of sensitive but mature Kathy, sexy, clever Ruth and volatile, introvert Tommy, with the two girls each vying for the latter’s affection.

Sheltered from the outside world, the students are initially unaware of the sinister truth behind their almost perfect existence, until a concerned teacher lets slip they are clones, being groomed as organ donors.

Growing up with the horrible truth that they will probably not live beyond their 30s, as adults, the friends become embroiled in an ultimately doomed love triangle with each other.

Never Let Me Go is a study of the state’s power over the citizen and there’s a frustrating futility about the characters’ attempts to delay the inevitable.

They are so conditioned into believing there is no viable alternative for them, rather than put up a fight, they practically roll over and accept their dreadful fate.

You can’t help wanting to jump into the screen, give them a good shake and tell them to run for the hills.

The film raises some interesting questions about submission to authority but its glossy Merchant Ivory production values serve to soften the powerful blow Romanek was clearly aiming for.

Nevertheless, Keira Knightly shines as the adult Ruth while Andrew Garfield is perfectly cast as the gangly, vulnerable Tommy.

But the real star of this film is Carey Mulligan who is simply outstanding as Kathy and again proves herself as one of Britain’s most talented young actresses today.

Never Let Me Go may not be the gutsy melodrama many were hoping would set the film festival alight, but it’s a thought-provoking, if a little contrived, tearjerker nevertheless.

Never Let Me Go (12A) opened the London Film Festival and will be released in cinemas nationwide on February 11.