Reviewed by Hannah Spencer.
Director: Apichatpong Weerasethkul, Neon, 2022 136 mins PG.
The latest film from Thai artist and filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethkul is either mesmerizing or sleep-inducing and there is not a lot of middle ground.
For its US distribution the film is only playing at one cinema, to one audience at a time.
It is intended as a unique experience at a fixed point in time and will not be released for home viewing.
Whilst this roadshow format will not be followed in Australia, it is helpful to keep in mind when viewing this odyssey of sound that it is more audio-visual poetry than traditional film.
Marking Weerasethkul’s first film to be set and filmed outside of his native Thailand, Memoria is above all about experience rather than plot or character.
Tilda Swinton (The French Dispatch), is the steady anchor of the film, playing expat Jessica who lives in Columbia and is visiting her mysteriously ill sister in the city of Botogá.
Jessica is awoken one night by a strange and ominous boom and continues to be haunted by this sound which is audible to only her.
Haunted by the noise, Jessica embarks on a journey to uncover its origins.
Meanwhile time, memory, and reality begin to slip and distort as if in a dream state.
Everything is ever so slightly displaced.
She engages a young sound engineer to recreate the noise which sounds like “a ball of concrete hitting a metal wall, surrounded by seawater”, but after several meetings she re-visits his studio only to be told that the man has never worked there.
Someone who Jessica knows to be long dead, spoke to her sister just recently, and she encounters an old man in a remote village with the same name as the young sound engineer.
Could they be the same person?
When the origin of the sound only Jessica can hear is revealed in an unexpected twist, it is less of a resolution and more of a footnote.
The strength of this film lies in its sensory experience, especially its incredible sound design.
An exercise in patience, shots linger on still scenes, long after any action has taken place.
An overwhelming sense of displacement suffuses the film, whilst leaving the audience to contemplate shots much like a film in an art gallery.
Undoubtedly another masterpiece from this experimental filmmaker.
Tilda grounds the piece with her remarkable performance however, it will come down to personal preference whether or not viewers enjoy this lingering, philosophical meditation.
3 out of 5 stars
Screening at select theatres nationally.
