The challenge this week is how to convince you to go see "Never Let Me Go" without ruining its surprises for you. The film looks deceptively normal: It's a love triangle with Andrew Garfield, Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan set in 1970s and '80s England. But — and this is a huge but — there's one slight difference between their world and our own.

Here's what I can tell you: The film is based on a 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, and like his earlier work, "The Remains of the Day," it focuses on a particularly English institution — in this case, boarding school. England has always convinced its ruling class, bred in the cloisters of Eton and Winchester, that they were special, but Ishiguro imagines a public school that indoctrinates children to serve a very different — and chilling — purpose in life.

I hesitate to call the story "science fiction," but it is, in the style of Philip K. Dick's best works, such as "Valis" or "A Scanner Darkly," where all that's needed are one or two well-placed tweaks to existing reality. Ishiguro posits a modern dystopia where the big scientific breakthrough was not in nuclear but genetic engineering. The story follows three children — sensitive Kathy, troubled Tommy and headstrong Ruth — as they bond at their reclusive boarding school, Halisham, and then try to cope as young adults, in and out of each others' arms, when they discover what their breeding has been for.