‘Memoria’ Trailer: Tilda Swinton Experiences a Mysterious Sensory Syndrome in the New Film From Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the acclaimed Thai filmmaker behind Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Cemetery of Splendour, and more, is back with Memoria. The movie is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and we now have a mysterious, intriguing trailer that’s bound to make this shoot up to the top of your “must-see” list (if it wasn’t already there to begin with). Memoria follows a woman (Tilda Swinton) who “begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome.”

Memoria Trailer 

God damn, now this is how you cut a trailer. “It’s like…a rumble, from the core of the Earth,” Tilda Swinton says as this trailer begins. “And then it shrinks.” What’s she talking about? The trailer doesn’t give you any real answers, and that’s what makes it so effective. So many movie trailers these days give the entire movie away, and that can be frustrating. So when a trailer like this comes along – a trailer that has absolutely no answers and only gets more and more mystifying as it unfolds – I get excited.

The official synopsis describes Memoria as “a bewildering drama about a Scottish woman, who, after hearing a loud ‘bang’ at daybreak, begins experiencing a mysterious sensory syndrome while traversing the jungles of Colombia.”

In addition to Swinton, the cast includes Jeanne Balibar, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Juan Pablo Urrego, and Elkin Diaz. Memoria will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on July 15, and we’ll hopefully learn when the rest of us can see it soon after.

Expressions and Memories

While all of this is very vague and mysterious, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s director’s statement may shed some light on what’s going on here. Then again, it might not.

“As a kid I was drawn to jungles, animals, and mountains,” the filmmaker said. “During the 70s, I grew up reading novels about hunters looking for treasures from lost civilizations. However, Thailand does not possess ancient empires full of gold, nor headhunter tribes, nor anacondas. Forty years later, I am still drawn to such landscapes but they are covered now with layers of other stories. I am attracted to the history of Latin America as if it was a missing part of my youth. I have come to Colombia to collect expressions and memories, not the Amazonian gold. I am deeply in debt to the individuals I have met in various cities, from psychologists, archaeologists, engineers, activists, to junk collectors.”

The director then added:

“Another important factor in the birth of this project is my own hallucination. While researching, I often heard a loud noise at dawn. It was internal and has occurred in many of the places I visited. This symptom is inseparable from my exposure to Colombia. It has formed the basis of a character whose audio experience synchronizes with the country’s memory. I imagine the mountains here as an expression of people’s remembrances through centuries. The massive sierras, with their creases and creeks, are like the folds of the brain, or the curves of sound waves. With the scores of acts of violence and trauma, the terrain inflates and trembles, to become a country with never-ending landslides and earthquakes. The film itself is also seeking for a balance in this active topography. Its skeletons, the images and sounds, are shaken out of place. Perhaps this is a ‘sweet spot’ where I and this film can synchronize, a state where delusion is the norm.”

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