MEMORIES OF A BURNING BODY – Review by Jennifer Green
Costa Rica’s International Oscar selection, and last February’s Berlinale Panorama Audience Award-winner, Memories of a Burning Body is a fascinating documentary about memory, aging and womanhood in Costa Rican society. Its subjects’ memories are specific to a time and place, yet the film’s lessons and themes are universal. Its formal presentation offers layers of depth to those themes.
Despite all this, the film’s audience is likely limited by its substance. Memories has garnered attention for its frank discussion of female sexuality. Older women open up about their sexual awakenings as young girls, frustrating and unfulfilling marital relations, masturbation and their continued interest in and enjoyment of sex well into old age.
The women interviewed aren’t seen on screen, however. This was their own choice and stemmed from concerns about viewers’ reactions and the stigmas still associated with women, particularly older women, discussing their own sexuality and pleasure.
Instead, director Antonella Sudasassi employs actors to dramatize the spoken words of the interviewees. One actress (Sol Carballo) embodies the amalgamation of these women as their older selves, but additional reenactments involve younger versions of the same woman as well as members of her family. The action begins with the actress moving around her apartment, followed by camera crews we see by way of introduction (they quickly fade into the background and aren’t seen again).
The entire film takes place in this apartment. Even as memories involve other settings, they’re staged inside the same apartment. This gives the film a sense of claustrophobia as well as the metaphorical suggestion that memories shuffle around in the brain like rooms in an apartment. This design choice was entirely intentional, not a factor of budget or COVID restrictions, even if the single interior location could evoke memories of the pandemic for some viewers.
While the sexual testimonies may be the most newsworthy, the discussion of domestic violence is equally striking. Women describe decades of abuse at the hands of their husbands, condoned or overlooked by parents (“it’s your cross to bear”).
They describe finding satisfaction in gaining independence and controlling their own lives, a “freedom” they only encounter in old age in the paternalistic, Catholic Costa Rican society of their era. In turn, they describe growing up in fear of the unknown, including basic anatomical information about menstruation, sexual intercourse and childbirth.
The women have wisdom to share as they muse about their decades of life and how their outlook, sense of self, expectations, plans and treatment by others have changed over time. They are glad to be women, even if they do feel they are more “vulnerable” than men.
This other, less headline-worthy content is equally fascinating, though perhaps mostly to viewers of a certain age – and maybe even mostly female viewers of a certain age. Yet truly, the act of listening to and learning from elders has extraordinary value, no matter your gender, age or nationality.
