There’s a moment in “Memory Box” where Alex (Paloma Vauthier), a Lebanese teenager in Montreal, finds a series of old photos of her mother, Maia, walking the streets of Beirut as a girl. Alex snaps photos of them with his iPhone, then scrolls through them quickly, so the photos become magical life, the still images becoming a film.
These beautiful sitting moments abound in Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s drama, about the new lives memories – even traumatic ones – can take on when passed down from generation to generation. On a snowy Christmas morning, Maia (Rim Turki) receives a box full of diaries, photos and tapes she had sent to a friend in Paris in the 1980s, documenting her teenage years in the shadow of civil war. Lebanese.
When Alex, defying her mother and grandmother’s orders, rummages through the box, she discovers a whole life that Maia never shared with her.
The relationship between mother and daughter is rather finely etched – there’s a little too much going on in this ambitious, cross-generational film – but Hadjithomas and Joreige deftly use Maia’s archive to weave together past and present. His notebooks and cassettes are based on the actual correspondence of Hadjithomas and the photographs of Joreige de Beyrouth. As Alex sifts through the elements, the makers recreate how memory transport works: grainy photos transform into smooth stop-motion animations that pull us into pop-tinged flashback sequences.
But when Maia enthusiastically develops a roll of film from 25 years ago, the footage appears blank. Memories, whether human or technological, have their limits. But by sharing them, as “Memory Box” shows with emotion, we can rediscover them.
memory box
Unclassified. In English, French and Arabic, with subtitles. Duration: 1h42. In theaters.