Berlinale 2024 | Memories of a Burning Body

 Antonella Sudasassi Furniss’s dramatic feature film, Memories of a Burning Body, which was co-produced by Costa Rica and Spain, made its global debut on February 19, 2024, at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival, when it was chosen for the Panorama section. Ana, Patricia, and Mayela develop their ideas of femininity in accordance with unwritten rules and standards during an oppressive era when sexuality was taboo, and with their newfound bravery, they can talk about it openly. All three women’s memories, wishes, and hidden truths are intricately intertwined, creating a poetic tapestry.

Actress “Sol Carballo” impersonates the voices in the current scenario and, with the voice-overs, portrays the stories of women who suffered from not being comfortable in their own skin in a religiously dominant male society. By observing the unspoken expectations and standards set by their culture, they learned how to be ladies. The movie portrays a united expression of women who bravely discuss their secrets despite cultural restrictions. The work delves into topics of femininity, sexual identity, and personal growth in the setting of a traditional Latin American culture.

The filmmaker portrays a discussion she wished she might have had with her grandmothers but never felt brave enough to discuss intimacy with them. But through the voices we hear, they dare to express what they have been and experienced during the hectic era. As one of the protagonists explains in a liberated and sincere fashion, “It’s been really difficult to unlearn everything we’ve been taught about being a woman and to just be human beings.”

Memories of a Burning Body continues what Antonella Sudasassi Furniss brings out in her debut feature film, Hormigas, which was also selected for Berlinale 2019. In both movies, the director explores the limits and taboos, especially in Latin American communities. Comparing with Hormigas, in which the woman is agonising to bear a baby boy, in Memories of a Burning Body, the women are to endure the prison of their bodies, the place of controversy for centuries, the house of guilt and abstinence.

“I always lived with my husband until he passed. He was very horny—too horny, in fact.” These are the frank words of an old lady walking through the rooms of old pictures hanging on the wall. Her sarcastic laugh after that, which is derived from a voice-over cast on the scene, guides us to a long story of bitterness she and her peers have suffered from. The beautiful frames synthesize without jumping to the stories and coupling them with each other to demonstrate the common history of a generation. We witness a kind of “stereotypical embarrassment about being a woman” that turns into a narrative of acceptance and congruence.

Moving on a timeline from juvenile brilliance to the annihilation of the figure on the verge of death, we see that the body might be the only temple a woman possesses to identify herself as who she is beyond the predominant attitudes. Yes, “it is the temple of fire, and just another fire will extinguish it.” When the old woman remembers the young girl at home conflicting with her mother and school’s strict rules against sexual desire and her explanation about the details of body decay while facing death, we are indeed walking on the same track as a suppressed woman – the harsh track of taboos shaping time.

How can someone live out of the norms she has been shaped by accordingly? Humans, as Carl Gustav Jung says, are carrying the burden of their ancestors’ knowledge, and collective consciousness is controlling men and women arbitrarily. In a scene of the film, we see the woman being stuck behind the door of the bathroom accidentally and remembering the time she was immured in the bathroom as a young girl. After coming out, she murmurs desperately, “They will tell you: you’re a bad little girl.” It is the narration of the bad girls who have been punished for a long time only for who they are, under the pretext of religious, cultural, or social patterns. But it is never too late, even for the aging female body, to taste the wine of passion and walk in the land of freedom.

Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, with her phenomenal cinematography and subtle editing in Memories of a Burning Body, treats us like an old storyteller. As a kind granny, she brings a piece of treasure out of the dark soil. On the silver screen, she shares the gender agony that is still on the rise around the world.

© 2020-2024. UniversalCinema Mag.