Anna (Jessie Buckley) drives along just as the dulcet tones of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart fades out on the radio. The DJ thanks the caller for their request and commiserates on their negative test “it happens to us all”. Anna is a teacher currently between jobs and even the woman on the other side of the desk asking her job-related questions is lamenting negative results. While all will become clear whatever is happening is effecting plenty of people. Plus, if you have seen Christos Nikou’s debut film Apples, you’ll know that this almost-dystopia isn’t so far removed from the world we currently inhabit.
Later that evening, Anna receives a phone-call from The Love Institute offering her a job – overcome with curiosity she accepts on the spot but keeps it to herself. At dinner with her partner, Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) and coupled friends the ‘tests’ are explained, sort of. Couples visit The Institute, take the test, and based on its outcome it will be determined if those in the relationship(s) are actually in love. Anna and Ryan took it years previously, they are what Helen Fielding would call ‘smug marrieds’ (albeit just co-habiting and not actually married). Did you know that only those who sleep soundly and sing aloud to songs are actually in love?
When she starts at her new place of work under the management of divorcé Duncan (Luke Wilson). He who delivers her induction which includes Playmobil figures and a multitude of toy-realised scenarios (meet-cuticles, shall we say… I’ll get my coat). Anna is then assigned to shadow Amir (Riz Ahmed) as she learns the ropes. It’s a quirky set-up in which couples arrive (in a multitude of races but always heteronormative duos. NB. the gay couple who ‘break’ the machine later in the film) and are put through their paces, their connection prodded and poked at, their bond put to a slew of tests. Like, can they identify their partner while blindfolded just from body odour or do they trust each other enough to be flung out of a plane from a great height while sharing a parachute? All the while listening to the sound of pee-inducing rain through the sound system or only singing French lyrics during karaoke – c’est romantique et la lange d’amour!
Just like in Apples, the analog and digital dichotomy is blindingly obvious and yet again, somebody is assigning tasks/tests to ascertain some kind of proof of diagnosis as it were i.e. loss of memory or, here, romantic compatibility. Until the final test and they have a fingernail (of their choosing) ripped out with pliers which is then placed in a petri dish and shoved in a microwave-esque piece of machinery before the result is determined.
Anna throws herself into her job and makes many test suggestions along the way, some of these even find their way home. Perhaps she and Ryan can shower each other after drawing their portraits or pull a Sam/Molly Swayze/Moore at the pottery wheel. It becomes apparent that Anna is delighted by love and the prospect of it and yet still won’t disclose to her one-and-only where she goes everyday. Why is she so bothered by his opinion (he loathes the Institute though we never find out why)?
Like its predecessor, Fingernails is a quiet, wry look at love and human connection, an allegory on the belief of love. Its premise isn’t so far-fetched when one considers how the majority of us look for it in this day and age courtesy of social media, dating apps and the reliance of technology. Matches made based on a percentage score following a few asinine and inconsequential questions, algorithm and the swiping of a finger. There’s a timeless quality before technology is onmipresent – shot on 35mm - to the film, a space without mobile phones before technology is omnipresent. Visuals suggest it could be the nineties but music gives an eighties flavour. The soundtrack is, just like Apples, perfectly curated for the subject matter at hand: Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, Only You and Don’t Go by Yazoo, and Frankie Valli’s The Night providing emotional heft and accompaniment when needed.
There’s an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind melancholy and Truman Show tragi-comedy to Nikou’s sophomore feature which is less dark (figuratively and literally speaking), the colour palette is still muted and muddy in tone with the occasional flash of red. The filmmaker refutes the whole ‘Greek Weird Wave’ label and cites American cinema as his main influence - hammered home by the North American setting and English speaking cast. Stylistically speaking it is not quite dystopian but something is definitely off in this absurdist allegory and the search for human connection and true love. Love is instinctual, it needs to be felt, and according to a working class hero is all you need. The course of which never did run smooth, unlike the healthy nailbed.
From January to April, things were moving along nicely. My goddaughter-niece turned one – despite the fact that I cannot remember life before she arrived – but then a few things rocked my little bubble and the people I hold the dearest. It has culminated in the twelve months of 2023 feeling like three years. It wasn’t all bad, there were some positives amid the… seizures… tears… pneumonia… the end of a friendship… cyst on the brain… a stenosis diagnosis… a healing trip to London to experience the shattering catharsis of A Little Life on stage… a Fringe & Bracket reunion… tears… fractured limbs… a much needed sunshine break… I started writing again… all those murdered babies and no ceasefire in sight… ‘Whoopi’ was vacated… relief… healing and self-care… stopped expecting a ‘me’ from anybody… I stopped writing again… boundaries… said enough… I am enough… oh, and Last Christmas finally made Christmas #1 39 years after initial release – RIP George x
Anyway. Phew. Shrugs, *blows raspberry at stress and worry*
I did manage to see some films this year albeit non-film festival ones courtesy of my Curzon and mubi memberships. Below are the twenty I admired the most, half of which excitedly were directed (and written) by women and depict the whole gamut of emotions experienced by a multitude of fully-rounded, complex humans. My favourite being the masterclass in misogyny, Justine Triet’s pitch perfect Anatomy of a Fall.
Favourites Films of 2023
Favourite Books of 2023
Thankfully, I also managed to read. Again, not as many as I’d have liked but personal distractions aside, 60 isn’t too bad. That’s 17,339 pages – actual pages too as I just don’t think I’m cut out for a Kindle. Absolute fave eleven are below left, on the right is a pile of honourable mentions: fiction and non, a volume of comics, women in translation, four blokes and a bit of poetry. If somebody was to make me choose just one, then today it would be Lagioia’s TheCity of the Living which I happened to review earlier in the year.
TV/streaming highlights of 2023
It was the year that bid farewell to The Marvellous Mrs Maisel (flashbacks, forwards and ageing make-up galore. Also, can’t spell it with just the one ‘l’, soz), Succession (AKA Wambsgans Win) and Happy Valley (bye-bye Tommy Lee Royce). There was a second series for Somebody Somewhere which is just the loveliest show in the world; gentle, tender, funny, and full of grace and warmth. Other TV highlights for me included:
Poker Face – Casino cocktail waitress Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) entangles herself with some shady people following the murder of her best friend. She goes on the run, solving crimes wherever she ends up. Made all the more interesting by her uncanny ability to spot a lie. Think Wonder Woman (sans lasso) meets Columbo via the quick-witted brain of Rian Johnson.
The Last of Us – Pedro! In the adaptation of a game I will never play! Yet more importantly, S1 E03: Long, Long Time – Survivalist Bill (Nick Offerman) makes an unlikely connection in Frank (Murray Bartlett). Perfection.
The Bear S2 E08, Forks. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) finally comes into his own after Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) sends him to a posh restaurant to ultimately polish the cutlery.
Dark Winds – It’s 1971 and the discovery of three dead bodies in a motel coincide with an armoured bank heist. Navajo reservation cops Lt. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) and Sgt. Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten) investigate the brutal deaths of three of their own with the help of a new recruit, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon). A revisionist western mini-series at its finest, re-appropriated from the perspective of indigenous Americans by indigenous Americans (producers Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin’s names add a little cash/cache). It’s brilliant and thankfully has been renewed for two more series. Whether we, in the UK get those remains to be seen but I sincerely hope so.
The Fall of the House Usher – I, admittedly, haven’t really been a fan of anything Mike Flanagan has done since The Haunting of Hill House (2018) but I think, he may have surpassed even that with this celebration of all things Edgar Allan. The whole cast bring their A-game and it is deliciously dark, twisted and utterly compelling from the first ten minutes. Poe-etic even (ugh). As an aside, I bloody love Bruce Greenwood – the perfect replacement for the other guy.
First Cow surprisingly – for anyone who has seen the trailer – opens in the present day as a woman (Alia Shawkat) and her dog unearth human remains. Visually, it reminiscent of Kelly Reichardt’s 2008 film, Wendy and Lucy. The sky is blue, birds are chirping and the low camera angle makes our eyeline at one with the earth, along with the bones. The camera pans to the river and a freighter moves languidly across the water. In the blink of the eye, it has transitioned to a tugboat and, just like that, we have travelled back in time.
Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro) is foraging amidst the greenery for mushrooms. They are his first choice but he searches for anything edible to feed the party of fur trappers he cooks for, as he tries to stretch their diminishing supplies. Among the leaves, brush and overgrowth he stumbles across a naked Chinese man (“not Indian”) and within moments Cookie has given calligrapher King-Lu (Orion Lee) food, something to wash it down with, a coat and a ride on his way.
They won’t meet again for a number of days, weeks even, but when they do King-Lu will return the favour, giving Cookie shelter and a place to stay. The two become fast friends and set about making some money: “To get started, you need capital” declares King-Lu to which Cookie retorts without missing a beat: “You need leverage.” That leverage comes in the form of Chief Factor’s (Toby Jones) honey-coloured cow (Evie). You’ve heard the expression, why buy the cow when you can milk it for free? With her produce, the two budding entrepreneurs can make oily cakes. They drizzle them in honey and grated cinnamon, and make a killing selling them to the men mining and panning for gold.
As with the majority of Reichardt’s oeuvre, in terms of plot-points there aren’t many, but what is slowly revealed is an absolute pleasure to watch. She has the immense skill to relay so much with so very little and allows an audience to see but never instructs it where to look, often by her own sleight of hand in the editing suite. From the subtle timeline change to the use of light on the colour palette of yellows, earth tones and greens. It’s a quiet unassuming film, discerning, as it excavates American history and wrestles with the past and present – summed up during an exchange between Cookie and Lloyd (Ewen Bremner) in which one suggests that where they are isn’t the place for cows… “This isn’t the place for white men either.”
Based on Jon Raymond’s first novel The Half Life (2004), First Cow is the author’s fifth collaboration with Reichardt – their sixth Showing Up was released on Blu-ray by A24 earlier this month – and can be viewed as a companion piece to Meek’s Cutoff (or even Certain Women, also starring Michelle Williams), certainly a historical pre-cursor of early life in nineteenth century Oregon, America. Thematically, it acknowledges the ambiguities of (male) friendship. Those formed under the most unlikely circumstances and the power, grace, pleasure and heartaches that bind us together, marking human frailty and endeavour in such a profound, moving, and meditative way. The cast is led majestically but Magaro and Lee, who both give such delicate and beguiling performances, made only more poignant by William Tyler’s score – often only the plucked strings of an acoustic guitar.
First Cow is a moving and quiet fable about kinship and an America of the past and present, overflowing with the milk of human kindness.
In Elena Ferrante’s Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey(2015), fellow Italian writer Nicola Lagioia was afforded the opportunity to pose a number of questions, via e-mail, to the inimitable author. This also coincided with the year they were both finalists for the Strega Award (Lagioia eventually won for his first novel in translation, Ferocity). It’s a fascinating repartee and at one point, he states “For me literary needs always take precedence over the journalistic ones.” This is certainly evident in his latest book – a book which states it’s a work of fiction on the verso of the title page but then acknowledges that “the story told in this book is true” AKA “the most vicious crime in modern Roman history”.
In March 2016 in an apartment just outside Rome, the body of twenty-three-year-old Luca Varani was discovered brutally murdered at the hands of Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato. Two seemingly ‘ordinary’ men from ‘decent’ backgrounds. The crime supposedly sent Italy into shockwaves at the time but managed to bypass the UK entirely. The first I heard of it was when I started Nicola Lagioia’s The City of the Living, published by Europa editions UK and translated by Ann Goldstein (Queen of Italian translation and brilliant friend of Ferrante).
This gripping literary work of true crime pulls together months of interviews, courts documentation and correspondence with one of the killers in such a way, it reads like fiction. While the crime itself is stomach-churning and the conclusion of the court-case infuriating, Lagioia never loses empathy in portraying every injured party of this tragedy (and there are many). He seeks to expose Foffo and Prato’s humanity even when actions proved they had, frighteningly, lost it. Painting a truly compelling narrative of class, corruption, drugs and violence, he forefronts class, betrayed expectations, sexual confusion, and the provocative blood ties often unbearable in families.
Lagioia describes The Eternal City as one of absolute freedom but this story shows just how oppressive that liberty can be. The author, who lived in Rome for many years before moving on, pulls no punches in depicting the decay of a city crumbling, not only via its historic ruins but from its rotten core. A metropolis of darkness and an underbelly most tourists are unaware of. So convincing is his prose that it soured my opinion of a place I once adored.
A lot of its publicity has compared The City of the Living to Capote’s In Cold Blood, however, I find it pointless to compare the two. Both are incredible pieces of writing but this, is less dated, more incisive and one tends not to question its veracity (Dave Cullen’s Columbine or Michelle McNamara’s I’ll be Gone in the Dark are probably more appropriate contemporaries). After reluctantly finishing it, the first thing I did was Google the case. I was furious to not only finish the book but also in such a way, where justice failed (yet again!). I had to, if only to see these people whose lives and death(s) had kept me so rapt over three days because at no point does the author give any description of the three men beyond the height of one and the hairpiece of the other.
The City of the Living is a brilliant and disturbing page-turner brimming with tension. The book is a must-read about the reverberation and ruination of lives following a brutal act, in which identity crises, sexual complexities, personal supposition, and the location it all happened in played a part. It bolsters the notion that once again, humans can be atrocious and the belief in/notion of justice is not only blind but, at times, ridiculous.
There have been numerous attempts to depict the cruelty of dementia onscreen, detailing the disease, from diagnosis to decline. Often told from the (adult) children’s perspective, most of these films comment on the hardship and then the parent is often shoved into assisted living – despite refusal – where there are medical professionals who will help them. Viggo Mortensen’s Falling doesn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel, however, his film is a family drama first and foremost with dementia in a supporting role.
The actor was on a night-flight returning from his mother Grace’s funeral in 2015 when he initially got the idea for a film. At the wake, he noted in his journal all the conversations he’d had and overheard, a lot of which triggered remembrances from childhood. He was intrigued by the differing recollections of memories (often the same ones) shared during the memorial.
Memory is a theme which has recurred through his previously published work, including books Coincidence of Memory, and I Forget You for Ever and makes up the genesis of Falling, his feature debut as writer-director. This debut is seen through the eyes of John Peterson (played respectively Luca & Liam Crescitelli, Grady McKenzie, Etienne Kellici, William Healy and, finally, as an adult by Mortensen himself) and uses fictionalised aspects of the actor’s childhood .
Angry Old Man
Willis (Lance Henriksen) is a belligerent old bastard of a man, foul-mouthed, abrasive and stuck in a time-warp. He is stoic and habitually unmoving in his attitude and views of the world, made all the more problematic by his advancing dementia. His son John, a pilot, who lives with his partner Eric (Terry Chen) and daughter Monica (Gabby Velis) in California brings Willis to visit so that he and sister Sarah (Laura Linney) can make plans for their father’s long-term health-care. Specifically, selling the farm in upstate New York and finding somewhere geographically closer to them so that they may share the care-load.
Willis’ reaction comes as no surprise to the whole idea. Cue a multitude of slurs, expletives and the testing of anyone’s patience but John remains calm, reticent and immune to the insults until, well, he isn’t. In a series of flashbacks, we see there is no love lost between father and son – the term “cocksucker” is used as both an expletive and term of endearment. It is these flashes of memory that give way to happier moments as Willis – the younger iteration played by Sverrir Gudnason – and Gwen’s (Hannah Gross) love story is detailed in snatches of scenes, like a slideshow, depicting their wedding day, the birth of their children and the inevitable fracture and breakdown of their relationship. These snapshots are interwoven with moments seen through the eyes of their children.
Young John (Grady McKenzie) and his father Willis (Sverrir Gudnason)
Amongst these, we see father and son bonding, hunting and fishing on the lake, the joy evident on the little lad’s face. There was affection once-upon-a-time but as John grows and away from Willis’ overbearing control, through divorce after divorce, the relationship becomes fractious building to a head during the boy’s teenage years.
The film frames Gwen as the love of Willis’ life, however, he doesn’t seem to know what true happiness is with or without her, and he spends the last few years of their relationship torturing her and trying to make her as miserable as possible. Yet, in a film which focusses on subjectivity and memory can the viewer take anything at face value or do we doubt everything? These flashes belong to multiple people, their perceptions as they experience them, and then there’s Willis’ recollections are even more questionable due to his advancing years and disease.
Mortensen comes across as a fairly unassuming and private man which makes this all the more fascinating. Reportedly working for free in order to finance this film, the film’s producer, director, screenwriter and composer chose to fictionalise some elements of his early life and childhood without losing verisimilitude leaving the viewer to question what the ‘factual’ element is. Apparently, Little Viggo (he was never know as junior) did have a dead duck as a pet which fed his ‘obsession’ with death, and the scar above his top lip was allegedly caused by barbed wire (and not by his father’s hand as the film suggests). He’s not a pilot either but his brother, Walter, had a cameo as one in an early Mortensen film, The Crew (1994). Their other brother Charles is also named in the film’s pre-credit dedication – there is no sister. In reality, Mortensen apparently took on the lion-share of caring for their parents – both of whom had dementia – prior to their respective deaths, Falling is not only a love letter to lost parents but for his younger siblings.
The Petersons, L-R: Willis (Gudnason) and Gwen (Hannah Gross)
There are little nuggets of information scattered throughout that, upon first viewing, few would be aware of but serve as nods to the Mortensen/Atkinson family history. It is clearly no accident that John has the surname he does. While Mortensen went by Little Viggo, his father tended to be Peter. John Peterson is, symbiotically, Peter’s son. Much was made of Mortensen’s choice of sexuality for his main character, however, he has stated in interviews that he wanted to exaggerate the polarisation between father and son. Both are presented in a very specific microcosm of American society – you’d be hard pressed not to miss the Obama image on the fridge – and a Presidential term that was afflicted with the darker aspects of misogyny, racism, homophobia and misanthropy (it was to get oh so much worse with the 45th). Themes suggested in this narrative. John and Willis are at odds over political affiliations, life choices, sexuality, as well as their memories of Gwen.
As a side note, it’s a really astute observation that the older generation i.e. Sarah and John won’t call out Willis for his bullshit opinions but his older grandchildren will. Monica, on the other hand will often lapse into Spanish (presumably she is the personification of the Mortensen boys’ childhood in Latin America) – her mother tongue – but is his best friend. She’s the only one who will accept him for who he is. Coincidentally, an immigrant like herself.
Eric (Terry Chen) and John’s daughter Monica (Gabby Velis)
Mortensen’s maternal grandfather (and one brother’s namesake) was Canadian and a medical doctor and two Canadians plays Doctors here. Close friend and collaborator David Cronenberg (as deadpan proctologist Dr. Klausner) and Hannah Gross’ actual father Paul plays Dr. Solvei. Mortensen own son, Henry, also makes an appearance as law enforcement officer Sgt. Saunders. So many father and son references and yet the real driving force of the narrative is the mother – she is the conscience running through the film and, as previously mentioned, only in her absence is her (somewhat romanticised) presence felt all the more, the subjective memories of her often the bone of contention between father and son. For John, his mother has gone, his memories are relegated to the past while Willis – due to his declining cognisance – has Gwen in the present despite having had a couple of wives since her. She is whom he recollects, imagines her in front of him, and continues to love during his sun-downing.
Thankfully, they are eventually able to accept each other’s version of events, something Mortensen also learnt in real life. He told Alec Baldwin during his podcast episode that this is aspect he personally finds so unconvincing about the so-called ‘dementia’ films; the need to depict people as bumbling and forgetful, with their carers gently revising their recollections, as this wasn’t his experience at all. “One thing you learn is not to correct them. It’s too late – don’t argue anymore… if they’re enjoying the memory, let it go.”
It is those types of scenes, as Falling edges towards its denouement, that are the most heart-breaking as the son moves back in with the old man (Canada doubling for Watertown, New York state) who, in his confused state, believes his ranch is under siege – despite having sold parts of it and promptly forgotten. In reality, Mortensen Sr. would lapse into Danish to converse, often slipping back to his own childhood while the actor would sleep in the next room with a baby monitor for company. Onscreen, Henriksen’s Willis mistakes John for his own father. John has dealt with his father, his diagnoses and outbursts with relative calm, diplomacy and resignation up to this point but to hear him raise his voice, see him rage – albeit briefly – exposes more of his humanity, pain and sorrow etched upon his (unshaven) face, and his usual perfectly coiffed hair standing on end.
It’s the first time his guard slips, his usual immaculate appearance refreshingly missing while Red River plays on a small portable TV in the background. In Howard Hawks’ 1948 Western things get tense between John Wayne as a Texas Rancher and his adopted son, Montgomery Clift. It’s no coincidence that John is trying to broker a deal to sell the remaining land given his ornery father is now too infirm to work it or save it. It also serves as a reminiscence back to a ‘simpler’ time, the old west in which ‘men were men’, a (toxic) masculinity which Willis clearly subscribed to but is also frozen in suspended in time, unwilling (unable?) to change. Décor of the surrounding rooms and even Mortensen’s costumes cement this, all are dated and somewhat old-fashioned. Henriksen’s performance is extraordinary throughout and especially in these moments, enabling such sympathy in a man who has up to that point been largely unpleasant and devoid of sentimentality is certainly no mean feat.
Grandpa Willis and his favourite person share a nap
Falling is gorgeously edited by Ronald Sanders (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method) and stunningly shot by DoP Marcel Zyskind (The Two Faces of January, The Dead Don’t Hurt). Certainly, it didn’t hinder the first-time director having a cast and crew of familiar people/frequent collaborators working alongside him in what proves, to be a beautiful and cathartic experience, one that stays with you. There is a lot to admire and be moved by.
It asks questions about age, memory, its perception, recollection, retainment and reconstruction – and its persistence (there’s even a sneaky nod to Dalí’s 1931 painting, see image above) the notion of verisimilitude, and, above all else, forgiveness. This is no typical screen dementia patient, there is no withering away quietly – here the patriarch keeps his personality, his faults hard to ignore. He is tenacious, angry, insecure, his presence overwhelming at times; impossible to love and loved anyway. It’s a film which reconciles life with the parent you have with the one you might have wished for, full of compassion, empathy, and grace.
Mortensen (centre) with brothers Charles and Walter (1966)
On Christmas Eve as the snow blankets the ground and buries car wheels deep in Montreal, Alex (Paloma Vauthier) and her Téta (Clémence Sabbagh) open the door to a parcel from Beirut. The delivery – addressed to Alex’s mother Maia (Rim Turkhi) – is initially turned away by the oldest matriarch who declares that “the past stinks”. The box contains cassette tapes of a life suppressed; Maia’s teenage years of the 70s and 80s in the wake of the sender’s death. Liza was Maia’s best friend and her dying wish, it appears, was to be reunited with her friend albeit through their memories, photos, notebooks and audio files. While Maia is too bereft to embrace her past, Alex finds the perfect opportunity to connect with a country she has never visited and a woman, her own mother, whom she barely knows.
With the aid of the box the audience learns, along with Alex, what a life is like during war – for most of us, we have not had to experience it – and bridging the generational divide however possible. Images literally come to life and interact with the music playing from the cassette recordings, for example, a memorable time-lapse sequence sound-tracked to Visage’s “Fade to Grey” while, you’ve guessed it, fading to grey. It may sound trite but it’s far from it as real-action bombs and gunfire burn holes in negative strips, and a potentially simplistic premise is fleshed out. It is incredibly evocative of a country ravaged by war and visually impressive, beautifully edited by Tina Baz.
Shifting between fantasy and reality, and with the help of flashbacks Alex enters her mother’s adolescence, her dreams and nightmares during the Lebanese Civil war and the loves and losses overcome during a tumultuous time. Alex, with the help of the late Liza, her Téta and the memory box is able to embrace the most important relationship of her life and see her mother not only as a woman and friend but with new understanding. The same goes for Maia and her own matriarch.
With such heavy hitting themes surrounding death, trauma, and abandonment, it is often the case for films depicting this sort of conflict to do so with earnestness and solemnity, however, Memory Box doesn’t do that. There were some 120,000 fatalities during 1975-1990 but not all perished in Beirut, many survived, lived and thrived and it is these people who are celebrated, the dead honoured in this intergenerational tale with women at the heart of its narrative.
To go forward, one must go back and sometimes reunite with your trauma and, in this case, a homeland which has been suppressed, wartime survival which has been denied, tragedy which has been compartmentalised, like a photo film that has never been processed in over thirty years. There is a compassion to Joreige, Hadjithomas and Gaëlle Macé’s screenplay which is non-judgemental and forgiving, especially in relation to Raja’s reappearance as an adult (Rabih Mroue). The first half may rely of a visual inventiveness and the image, yet, the second still manages to hit with emotional resonance and be deeply moving brimming with moments of levity.
Memory Box is a handcrafted gem by experimental filmmakers, Khalil Joreige and Joanna Hajithomas. Utilising their own photographs and journals written between 1982 and 1988 they create a visually inventive and accessible film which re-writes personal history, questions memory, its unreliability, and how it shapes the present. While visuals are particularly pop-arty and magazine-like, there is an overpowering resonance and meaningful juxtaposition. This is their memory box, made for their children, for whom the film is dedicated.
Memory Box is available to rent from all the usual places you can stream from.
An elderly woman completes a crossword with a young girl – there is a brief assumption she’s her granddaughter but the child gets up to leave with an “au revoir”. The girl then goes into every room along the dimly lit corridor and bids farewell to the other female residents until she reaches her destination; the bright room at the end of the hallway. ”Mama, can I keep her stick?”
After the passing of her grandmother, Nelly (Joséphine Ganz) and her mother Marion (Gabrielle Sanz) drive to the latter’s childhood home to pack up belongings, keepsakes and transport furniture, as families are wan to do after a bereavement. Nelly feeds her mother from the backseat of the car, extends the juice carton to her lips and then reassuringly clamps her arms around her mother’s neck as they both follow Papa (Stéphane Varupenne) driving the white van in front. Nelly is every inch the little mother of the title despite the interchangeability of role throughout the taut 82-minute film.
Nelly moves into her mother’s childhood bedroom and they both go through Marion’s note pads, school books and toys. The little girl chides her mother’s inability to spell but offers words of encouragement about a drawing of a fox. It’s an incredibly tender and loving relationship between the two. Despite being only eight years old, Nelly is wise beyond her years, empathy seeps from her every pore; she can sense her mother’s vulnerability and offers her narrow shoulders and small arms within which comfort can be sought. When Marion suddenly leaves, it is up to her daughter and partner to stay on and finish packing up. Nelly attempts to engage her father by bringing up the treehouse her mother built in the surrounding woods but the man merely shrugs and says he can’t recall anything about it. ” You don’t forget,” she scolds, “You just don’t listen.”
What happens next is so matter-of-fact that to go into detail would ruin the surprise (NB. Don’t watch the trailer if you wish to avoid spoilers) but it relies upon an open-minded audience and one which is willing to accept the ordinary and enchanted; the magic and imagination of a child. We all sought it once upon a time.
While Portrait of a Woman on Fire cemented Céline Sciamma as auteur, her earlier filmography has tended to forefront children and teenagers. Adults don’t really exist in the world she creates and she writes the world from their viewpoint whether they are eight-years-old, teenage girls, a tomboy, or a courgette. This film uses an autumnal colour palette full of lush browns and greens, and rich blues and burgundies; colours echoed between mother and daughter. Its costumes look to corduroy, woven jumpers and anoraks to weight the seasonal surroundings but also to give it a timeless quality. Transitions in time are slight but not insignificant – French language aside, this could be anywhere.
Childhood is a tricky thing to navigate while you’re experiencing it – although you tend not to realise just how much until you’re out the other side. Petite maman is extraordinary and enchanting, small and yet packs a punch. It is a thoroughly gorgeous film in which memories are tangible, maturation comes quickly, and a loving and assertive little woman seeks to renew her connection with her maman and say goodbye to her beloved grand-mère on her own terms.
The Framing Device 