Written and directed by leading actor Pierre Glénat, co-directed by Philippe Lebraud, characters meet in Buttes Chaumont park in Paris and their interactions will surprise you. Are they dreaming their lives, has reality become fantasy or projection? They talk, remember and then forget. Starring: Rakoto Chantal, Dominique Faure, Jérôme Fleury, Marie-Christine Glénat and Maeva Rasolofoarison.
There is something to be said about small, meaningful interactions with strangers in unexpected places, that can be both memorable yet fleeting. However, it doesn’t feel like Memories genuinely has something to say on the subject. You can sense that Pierre Glénat and Philippe Lebraud are trying to capture something more fantasy and curiously driven, rather than simple pleasures. Sadly, it doesn’t feel as though it works, and the end result is instead a collection of sporadic encounters packaged together with quite weak links.
It lacks a larger meaning, something to extend beyond the basic quality of memory, mostly because it isn’t playing with a lot of emotion. Everything feels very on the surface, it misses out on adding context or a layered quality to hint at the bigger picture of these encounters. Part of that struggle is the visual quality, which ties itself up with unnecessary transitions. The camera movement can be juddery, it lacks a subtlety or gentler hand to bring together these moments. As well as using a lot of establishing shots which add a bigger distance rather than connecting everything together.
That’s basically the continuing issue with Memories, without that interconnectedness, it struggles to build an atmosphere and to add depth to the characters. Particularly, Pierre Glénat’s Mr. Veillon, who is our constant throughout this story, but there’s not much to learn about him. There are certainly things that you could infer but there isn’t really a tangible persona at work, leaving too many questions unanswered to round out the character and the performance.
Memories unfortunately sets its goals too high, instead of focusing on the simple joys and curiosities of unexpected exchanges, it tries to add a theme of fantasy or a mysterious edge that’s beyond its grasp. The visual and audio qualities feel as though they didn’t get enough attention, there’s a lack of smoothness to how it moves and a lot of background interference. Ultimately, it feels too disconnected, that its time wasn’t used to effectively achieve what it was trying to say.
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