Review: Memoria

Image courtesy of Neon.

Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul makes films that are on their own wavelength - and you can either take the plunge and try to tune in or not, although that likely makes little difference to the director, who answer to the name "Joe" for those not willing to give his long name an attempt. For more than 15 years, Weerasethakul has been making strange, slowly paced and hypnotic films that seem to exist in their own universe. "Memoria," which stars Tilda Swinton, is his first in English.

The best of Weerasethakul's work - the unusual, trance-like "Tropical Malady" and the Palm d'Or-winning "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" - require the viewer to lose themselves in the lush imagery, hypnotic pacing and style and almost unexplainable stories that the director likes to tell. His latest isn't any different, although while I found it compelling it didn't rank among his greatest works.

In the film, Swinton's character,  Jessica, is visiting an ill sister who has been hospitalized in Bogota - the reasons given for her potential illness vary from the family dog to a tribe of natives who have cast a spell to prevent outsiders from visiting their lands - and it's easy to see her sense of displacement. She wanders around trying to speak the language, and occasionally finding a disconnect - for example, a scene in which she tries to track down a sound technician with whom she'd struck up a friendly acquaintance.

The reason she'd met with the technician is that, one night in the middle of the night, she heard a loud thumping noise with no apparent cause. Over the course of several days, she continues to hear it while she's roaming the streets or having dinner with her sister and her family. It's unclear whether anyone else can hear the sound, and there's a long sequence during which the sound technician tries to replicate it on his sound boards in his studio.

Things begin to get stranger. Aside from the recurring noise, Jessica is told by her sister that someone she was sure who'd died is still alive, and she can't relocate the sound technician after she tries to find him a second time. Later, she wanders into the countryside and meets a fish scaler named Hernan (Elkin Diaz), and during their discussion about memory and dreams it almost seems as if her dreams have intertwined with his. At one point, he takes a nap on the grass and appears to have died before waking up again and continuing the conversation with Jessica.

So, what is "Memoria" about? The answer is: the same thing that any of Weerasethakul's films are about: the mysteries of our existence on planet Earth. In his previous and best films, a young man goes into a jungle to locate his lover, who has been turned into a tiger ("Tropical Malady") and a man is visited by mystical woodland creatures with glowing red eyes who are supposed to be his deceased wife and son ("Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives").

You might not find a satisfying answer as to what takes place in "Memoria" - although there is somewhat of an explanation in a startling image late in the picture - but as is the case in previous Weerasethakul films, the experience is more about the journey than the destination. "Memoria" might not rank among the director's greatest films - at least, in my opinion - but Weerasethakul's vision is singular, and it's unlikely that you'll see anything else in a theater - which is the only place you'll see this film due to a release strategy in which it will apparently only screen at theaters and never be released on DVD or streaming - like it this year.