The British film Escape Me Never seems to have been written to test and display Elisabeth Bergner's impressive range as an actress. In a sense, what we see is a woman living out the stages of her existence in the few months in which the story takes place. The film opens in Venice, where Bergner is a street gamine named Gemma, who steals bread with a Peter Pan-like agility and defends herself with an intelligence of expression that is both eloquent and playful. In London, where she moves with her lover, Sebastian, an errant musical genius (Hugh Sinclair), it seems there are no clever ways to circumvent poverty. His treachery and their indigence combine to replace the childlike Gemma with an adult who retains the wisdom but none of the vivacity of the Venice gamine. Finally, with the death of her baby, Gemma becomes once more a kind of child, but somehow only to survive adulthood. The film itself is as mercurial as Bergner; now lovely, now clumsy, but always straightforward in its script and its attitude.