Léalo en español
Memories of a Burning Body is an interesting mix of fiction and documentary. Three women in their 70s talk about the development of their sexual and sentimental lives, while a single actress represents them on screen, at every stage of their lives.
The film is guided by an offscreen voice, while the performances have very little dialog and rely on body language and mimicry. The staging is practically a very theatrical kammerspiel within the interiors of a house; and flashbacks to the teenage years and youth of these women complete the narrative. The film is not overly sentimental, but at times it feels like an educational or historical film about the living conditions of women at that time.
Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, the director, belongs to a generation of Costa Rican directors who have found their voice and cause in feminism, treated in different forms and styles. Paz Fábrega (Cold Sea Water), Laura Astorga (Red Princesses) and Ishtar Yasin (Baladi Aldaia, My Lost Country), Valentina Maurel (I Have Electric Dreams) are also highly representative filmmakers of that country abroad.
Sudasassi made her magnificent first film debut with The Awakening of the Ants, the story of a young wife who feels trapped in a domestic environment. It premiered at the 2019 Berlinale and won several awards around the world.
In Memories of a Burning Body the stories of these women in 1960s Costa Rica, in a very religious middle-class society full of taboos, are very moving. They go through experiences that should be joyful and instead are filled with pain and suffering. None of them seem to have the support of their family and they only talk about their children when they are young, as if they had grown apart in adulthood.
The weakness of the film is that the actresses — who represent the leads in three stages of their lives — do not change their performance, nor does the production design, to reflect the story of each woman. The subtlety that the director surely intended, that of portraying a generation, is too ambitious and very confusing. One woman is a survivor of domestic violence; another is a widow; a third is divorced. But it is almost impossible to distinguish them, even for a Spanish-speaking audience guided by the cadence of their voices.
At the beginning of the film, there is a notice from the director that says, “This is the conversation I didn’t have with my grandmothers.” Perhaps this is why women’s life stories end in a stage of peace and a certain degree of happiness which is contagious for the audience, who hope that this kind of suffering is a thing of the past.
Director, screenwriter, producer: Antonella Sudasassi Furniss
Cast: Sol Carballo, Paulina Bernini, Juliana Filloy, Liliana Biamonte, Juan Luis Araya, Gabriel Araya, Leonardo Perucci, Cecilia García
Cinematography: Andrés Campos Sánchez
Executive Producers: Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, Manrique Cortés Castro, Estephania Bonnett Alonso
Co-Producer: Estephania Bonnett Alonso
Production design: Amparo Baeza Infante
Costume design: Patricia Alvarado Hurtado
Music: Juano Damiani
Sound design: Fernando Novillo
Sound: Sergio Gutiérrez Solórzano
Production companies: Substance Films (Costa Rica), Playlab Films, (Spain)
World Sales: Bendita Film Sales
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In Spanish
90 minutes
