Found Memories: Movie Review

★ ★ ★ ★

While the film moved slowly, it moved the way the people in it did. It was soft, and unassuming, and somewhat eerie like the village. It was old like the village; it was a conceptual culmination of things. I loved the ritualistic tone of it, of the sweet Madalena making bread for Antonio's coffee shop every morning. Every day even until the very end she crosses the railways, she cleans up the gate of the cemetery, she listens to the priest's sermon, and she has lunch with her friends. In the movie she shows and remembers the image of her dead husband, and finds his memory again and again each night. She is tired and riddled with routine until the arrival of Rita, a young photographer who is arriving in the ghost village of Jotuomba, Rite seems so awaken Madalena in a place where time seems to have stopped in some ways. They grow quite close and through this we learn about Madalena, and about her routine - and the way that routine is so much more than what it appears. Everyone in the village has a job and a routine, making the village itself a sort of permanent, independent system - forgotten by the rest of the world. However, in this odd self-sufficient structure there seem to be secrets, and the sense that not only the old people, but the way of life is dying. That's what makes the little mundane tasks so fascinating - specifically, Madalena's refusal to stack the bread the way Antonio instructs her to. This small act of defiance seems to be one of the only conscious choices she makes in a day and it is absolutely the only act of rebellion she has, possibly the only act of rebellion in the movie. The ever-ticking clock in the town intensifies the importance of each little act in particular, to me, was especially poignant. In a dying village it matters to laugh. It matters to never stop living. It matters to find joy and to teach every generation to find joy, even in minute act - even in the littlest details.