Memories Of A Burning Body

You are not going to find a more beautiful letdown than the stylish narrative documentary Memories Of A Burning Body, written and directed by Antonella Sudasassi. Filmmaker Sudasassi presents this movie as the conversation she never got to have with her grandmother. Three real older women, who go under the pseudonyms of Ana, Particia, and Mayela, speak openly off-camera about their unspoken sexual history.

As all three reminisce over the soundtrack, a film crew is getting ready to stage their stories using live actors. The three narratives are all combined into one, with the onscreen older woman (Sol Carballo) representing an amalgamation of the subjects. The older woman flashes back to when she was a girl (Juliana Filloy Bogantes), still living with her mother (Liliana Biamonte) and her father (Gabriel Araya Herrera).

“Filmmaker Sudasassi presents this movie as the conversation she never got to have with her grandmother.”

Sexuality was not discussed out loud back then, particularly not with little girls. The girl is left to pick it up on her own from overhearing older girls. If something awful is done to her, she has no one to tell. This continues as she grows into a young woman (Paulina Bernini Viquez), all the way to where she gets a husband (Juan Luis Araya Sanchez). No one told her she could get raped while married or that it was going to be over and over…

Memories Of A Burning Body is a feature that sports spectacular style but is in desperate need of more substance. Sudasassi is obviously a very talented director with a natural knack for invention. The choice to open the film with the film crew completely visible while Carballo prepares for a scene was the perfect way to highlight the documentary elements of the production before the acting begins.

Sudasassi also has several strokes of genius when it comes to blocking sequences and fleshing out what is being described by the subjects. The image of a woman collapsing over and over again to illustrate baby rearing is both rhythmic and clever imagery. The details and care for the period fashion and decor are well done as well. This was Costa Rica’s official entry into this year’s Oscar race for Best Foreign Language Film, and it is easy to see why.