Acclaimed Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul returns to the London Film Festival with his long awaited collaboration with Tilda Swinton.
★★★★★
From his debut documentary Mysterious Object at Noon to his Palme D’Or winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul creates films dictated by their own ethereal sense of logic. His latest feature Memoria is very much a continuation of the norm as it draws on familiar themes of time, memory, and human existence. But it’s also a shift for Weerasethakul as Memoria is both his first English-language feature and his first to be filmed outside of his native Thailand.
Set and shot in Colombia, Memoria‘s plot concerns Jessica (Tilda Swinton), a woman who’s visiting her sister Karen in Bogota after she was admitted to hospital due to a respiratory problem. One night, Jessica is suddenly awoken by a loud bang which, to her detriment, only she could hear. To detail more of Memoria‘s plot would be to spoil its mystical journey, which benefits from as little context as possible.
Weerasethakul’s style is profoundly unique in its sense of temporality and space. Lee Chatametikol’s editing is unhurried, allowing the audience to breathe in every nook and cranny of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s pristine cinematography consisting mainly of long, measured takes. The filmmaking is minimal and patient and while this will either turn some off the film entirely or, like myself, leave you utterly engrossed, it’s certainly done with purpose.
Lee Chatametikol’s editing is unhurried, allowing the audience to breathe in every nook and cranny of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s pristine cinematography consisting mainly of long, measured takes.
Likewise, as the plot revolves around the ambiguous search for the origins of Jessica’s sound, the aural soundscape created by Akritchalerm Kalayanmitr and his team is exquisite. In a scene where Jessica visits a recording studio to meet sound engineer Hernán (Juan Pablo Urrego) and asks him to recreate the noise digitally, the repetitive sound that we hear becomes increasingly disturbing as Hernán finely tunes it to Jessica’s specific requirements. In another scene where Jessica is out for dinner with Karen and her husband Juan (Daniel Giménez Cacho), she hears the sound again as it sharply cuts through the polite dinner atmosphere. It’s a moment that made some audience members jump and it’s commendable for the sound team in creating something so individualistic and defined.
However, Memoria would not work without an extraordinary central performance by Tilda Swinton. Plenty has already been said regarding Swinton’s otherworldly appearance and through Jessica, she is arguably portrayed as an outsider in Colombia (which is potentially self-referential to Weerasethakul). There is a captivating scene where Jessica peeps into a studio jam session and the manner in which the shot composition makes her frosty expression stick out among fellow listeners is quite startling. It’s a perfect casting choice and Swinton is transfixing throughout.
Memoria is another beautiful meditative piece of work from Weerasethakul that eventually builds into a transcending climax. The slow opening will likely decide whether this film is for you if you’re unfamiliar with the director’s oeuvre but if you are someone who loved Uncle Boonmee…, prepare to give yourself over again.
The Verdict
Visually gorgeous and thematically enthralling—Memoria is Weerasethakul at his hypnotic best. It won’t be a film for everyone but for those who embrace its surreal quality, it will have you mesmerised from its first bang.
Words by Theo Smith
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