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.
Full disclosure, I haven’t written anything in well over a year – it’s probably closer to two if I’m being completely honest – for a multitude of reasons: a severe lack of confidence, general work-related inability, the pandemic, or just general disgruntlement at the world around me. Inspiration took me by complete surprise when I began looking back over this blog space and I allowed myself to briefly reminisce about the enthusiasm I once had, and the encouragement I received from two wonderful souls. Both of whom are, devastatingly, no longer with us. Anyway I digress… although I’m sure there is something to add about the fragility and futility of life. Do what you love. So, I figured I’d try and write about a subject I love, a bit of an obsession* if you will.
One of the first pieces I published was way back in 2012 for a long-defunct film-site and it got me thinking of my onscreen main squeeze, Viggo Mortensen. Eleven years later, he is still somewhat of a King (and technically a Knight having been bestowed with the honour back in 2010 by Queen Margarethe II of Denmark) and continues to work, thankfully, choosing roles that are fascinatingly complex, interesting, and most of the time utterly unique to him.
“I have no plan. Maybe I should have a career plan but I don’t. I usually wait and hope the right thing will find me.”
The Evening Chronicle
Now a spritely 65-year-old (come October), the dimple-chinned deity has received countless SAG award noms, Golden Globes, EFAs, recognition at TIFF, the Goyas, BIFA, and BAFTA. Plus, wins at Stockholm FF and San Sebastian for his directorial debut, Falling, and a second and third Oscar nom (for Captain Fantastic and Green Book respectively). I can’t say I was a fan of Green Book to be perfectly honest – it was fine, j’adore Vig and Mahershala Ali but I kind of loathed Tony Lip. Thankfully, there has been plenty to enjoy since 2013 (which is where my original Viggo is King piece left off).
The Two Faces of January (Dir. Hossein Amini. 2014)
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel of the same name, Viggo is Chester McFarland, a con-artist married to Colette (Kirsten Dunst), who has to quickly rely on Oscar Isaac’s perfect stranger Rydal Kenner to get him out of a sticky sitch. Cue: frustration, jealousy, paranoia and a slow unravelling. As leading men go, few have looked finer in this tragic murder-flight-redemption mystery thriller. There is an almost Oedipal theme running throughout despite the link to Janus, and with filming taking place in Athens, Crete, Knossos, and Istanbul the emphasis is on heat, sand, and bright light (there are few shadows to hide in). Chester’s Man From Del Monte suit begins to look rather grubby by the end.
Jauja (Dir. Lisandro Alonso, 2014)
In 1880s Argentina, Danish Captain Gunnar Dinsen (Mortensen) is there with his daughter Ingeborg (Viilbjørk Malling Agger) who wants a dog, falls in love with one man, and has to spurn the affections of another… to reveal anything more of the plot would spoil the experience. This is a slow-burn and magical piece of cinema, its gorgeous visuals shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio (Mortensen also served as the film’s composer). The title, Jauja, refers to the once capital of Spanish Peru known as ‘never never land’ and the ‘land of milk and honey’; a mythical El Dorado of sorts. The film itself is existential in tone, hypnotic, and haunting and has me excited for Lisandro Alonso’s next film Eureka – a recent Special Screening at Cannes – which is also anchored by Mortensen.
Captain Fantastic (Dir. Matt Ross, 2016)
Ben Cash (Mortensen), his wife Leslie and their six, uniquely named children live deep in the wilderness of Washington State, “off-grid”. The kids are home-schooled, they hunt, fish, read Noam Chomsky and can be more than a little wild. When Leslie takes her own life, Dad and the kids have to shun isolation and venture into mainstream society, the first time for a lot of them. Vig continues his run of ‘out-of-time’ men, male characters on the cusp of, well, somewhere else. His Ben exudes a childlike simplicity and whimsy but he’s a limiting, almost dangerous, father; selfish, imperfect, and deeply flawed. It’s an incredibly honest and raw performance.
Falling (Dir. Viggo Mortensen, 2020)
Mortensen’s most personal project to date – a work of auto-fiction – based on his own childhood, his parents’ love story, and the last few years of their lives. He directed the film, wrote the screenplay, and composed the film’s score as well as starring as John, a Pilot charged with looking after his father Willis (Lance Henriksen), an unflinching and uncouth, bad-tempered old bastard of a man whose brain is slowly surrendering to dementia. This film is the antithesis of Florian Zeller’s The Father and one which looks at memory, communication, forgiveness, and is evidently made with love.
Crimes of the Future (Dir. David Cronenberg, 2022)
David Cronenberg’s 2022 body horror is the fifth time he has worked with his favoured leading man (a safe assumption by now, right? For anyone questioning the five films, Cronenberg plays a staid proctologist in Falling). After Tom Stall, Nikolai Luzhin, and Sigmund Freud comes Saul Tenser, he of tender soul – and still a man ‘undercover’ or in hiding. This is a vulnerable Vig. His Saul is a performance artist whose body leaves him in constant pain – he has the ability to produce multiple new body organs, which are then removed during a live show by his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux). He is then approached to go undercover to infiltrate some radical evolutionists. The world is changing (again) and “surgery is the new sex”. There are visual nods to The Man Who Laughs (1928), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and call-backs to Videodrome (1983), Crash (1996) and Existenz (1999). Viggo is, as ever, compelling but I think the women of the cast, Seydoux, Kristen Stewart (who is fantastic), and LifeFormWare Techs played by Nadia Litz & Tanya Beatty shade him at times.
My admiration goes way back to The Indian Runner (Dir. Sean Penn, 1991), I was 15 when I discovered the DVD in 1998, I’d just seen him in another directorial debut (ugh) Albino Alligator (1996) and wanted to see more, beyond the bespectacled and besuited moustache he played. Aside from the obvious aesthetically-pleasing exterior, there’s a quiet intensity, and nuance to his performances. He’s not a method actor but I find him as mesmerising as Brando (unsurprisingly, I’m a huge fan of Bud too). 27 years later, Mortensen is still my go-to, one of a select group of actors who I’ll watch anything and everything they churn out.
This has resulted in a wealth of work to look back on and dip in and out of from the multi-hyphenate artist. As well as the new projects he completes to look forward to. Perhaps, I will even, finally, get to those elusive three that I have yet to watch – La pistola de mi hermano (1997), On the Road (2012) and Far From Men (2014).
It’s rare for him to give a bad performance even if the film itself is a dud. Whether he’s onscreen for one brief scene or the King of a 682-minute trilogy, he tends to bring his kind of magic to it which keeps you enthralled or at least pique your interest. Next, however, will be his sophomore outing behind the camera, The Dead Don’t Hurt, an 1860s-set western love story, in which he will play Danish immigrant Holger Olsen opposite Vicky Krieps’ Vivienne Le Coudy. Can’t wait.
*“Without obsession, life would be nothing.” – John Waters
The Framing Device 