In Memory of Us (En souvenir de nous) reviews
Review by on 26 Sep 2008
It’s not often that a director owns up to how much chance shapes a film. Michel Léviant was utterly honest, though, in the post-screening Q&A for the first showing of this charming study of how time can change human relationships. He explained how he wrote much of the original script on the hoof, based on the real lives of the actors and the events surrounding them. It’s a moving story about three women friends retreating from their lives in the city to one of their family homes in the country one summer. The house is haunted by memories of youth, disappointed dreams and the lingering odour of childhood romance.
The friends grow very close until the wildest of the three oversteps the thresholds of acceptable behaviour and breaks the bonds between them. They fight.
Twelve years later one of the friends dies, bringing the others back together to grieve. One is an established writer who has sold the others’ story without consent. She is distant, cold, quite different from the person she once was.
This echoes Léviant’s experience and discomfort in making the film: he felt he was selling the story of actress Hélène Lapiower, who died of cancer before he shot the second part of the film. Léviant shot the early scenes thinking it would be little more than a second-rate TV flick, which meant he took far more risks than he would normally. But the unique opportunity to bring the same actors back to the same sets 12 years on, and re-cut, meant he could turn it into something really special.
Jason Palmer, Festival Daily
It’s not often that a director owns up to how much chance shapes a film. Michel Léviant was utterly honest, though, in the post-screening Q&A for the first showing of this charming study of how time can change human relationships. He explained how he wrote much of the original script on the hoof, based on the real lives of the actors and the events surrounding them. It’s a moving story about three women friends retreating from their lives in the city to one of their family homes in the country one summer. The house is haunted by memories of youth, disappointed dreams and the lingering odour of childhood romance.The friends grow very close until the wildest of the three oversteps the thresholds of acceptable behaviour and breaks the bonds between them. They fight.
Twelve years later one of the friends dies, bringing the others back together to grieve. One is an established writer who has sold the others’ story without consent. She is distant, cold, quite different from the person she once was.
This echoes Léviant’s experience and discomfort in making the film: he felt he was selling the story of actress Hélène Lapiower, who died of cancer before he shot the second part of the film. Léviant shot the early scenes thinking it would be little more than a second-rate TV flick, which meant he took far more risks than he would normally. But the unique opportunity to bring the same actors back to the same sets 12 years on, and re-cut, meant he could turn it into something really special.
Jason Palmer, Festival Daily
Review by on 24 Sep 2008
This film was so lovely and thought provoking, in its subject and in its unique fabrication; thanks for the chance to see it, and thanks to ML for such a charming and illuminating Q&A.
This film was so lovely and thought provoking, in its subject and in its unique fabrication; thanks for the chance to see it, and thanks to ML for such a charming and illuminating Q&A.
Film details
In Memory of Us (En souvenir de nous)
NEW FEATURES
Director: Michel Léviant
Actor: Hélène Lapiower
Actor: Marie Vinoy
Actor: Liliana Lolitch
Actor: Hélène Lapiower
Actor: Marie Vinoy
Actor: Liliana Lolitch
France, 2007.
92 mins. French with English subtitles.
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