Memoria

For Apichatpong Weerasethakul, watching MEMORIA together in the cinema in the distraction-free darkness and all-enveloping soundscape (Dolby Atmos) is the only possible way to experience the film, which begins in complete silence before a thunderous crack is heard. This sound jolts Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an orchid researcher visiting her sister in Colombia, from her sleep. The search for the source of the sound, which only she can hear, leads her to doctors and sound engineers, to an archaeologist (Jeanne Balibar) obsessed with thousand-year-old bones and into the world of curses, apparitions and myths. MEMORIA moves effortlessly between the magical and the everyday, creating a dense soundscape, ‘an orchestration of human forms of expression’ (AW). (mg)