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By : Lou Collier
2 min read
MEMORIA • dir Apichatpong Weerasethakul • Coolidge Theater, 4/22-4/28
WILD AT HEART • dir David Lynch • Somerville Theater, 4/5
Those who missed MEMORIA when it played here in the fall will get another chance to see it during the final week of April. The film is being released as a roadshow in only one theater at a time, and it’s supposedly never going to be available anywhere but the cinema. Tilda Swinton stars as an expat living in Colombia who wakes up one morning to an ominous thudding noise that only she can hear. The film follows her as she works with artists, scientists, and mysterious beings to understand what is happening to her. The director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, creates slow cinema that often mixes supernatural elements with Thai myths and history. UNCLE BOONME WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES is probably his best known film (it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes), though I’d personally recommend CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR first. Weerasethakul’s films have been known to put some viewers to sleep, but he doesn’t mind. He has stated, “To sleep in cinema means that you are either tired or comfortable enough to let your guard off and be comfortable enough to mix your own dreams with the sound and the image.”
Somerville Theater will continue “Face/Off: Travolta/Cage,” a 10 week series of double features starring the two actors, through May 3. On April 5th they’ll be screening David Lynch’s WILD AT HEART, which also won the Palme d’Or (and was famously booed at the ceremony). The film follows Sailor Ripley (Nic Cage) and his girlfriend Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern) as they are chased across the country by hitmen hired by Lula’s mother. It’s full of great over-the-top performances, and features several actors from Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS. Playing on 35mm.
—Lou Collier
* Originally published in-print in Boston Compass Newspaper April #145 2022
Check out all the art and columns of April's Boston Compass at www.issuu.com/bostoncccompass