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camellia1000
Reviews
Mémoires affectives (2004)
Major spoilers alert! My interpretation of the story
I like thought-provoking films, and this is one of them. The story is about a man who wakes up from a coma and remembers nothing. In search of his own memory, he seems to develop an uncanny ability to "steal" memories from his loved family and friends. He does it unintentionally of course, as images of their memories flow into his head as they describe them to him. Afterwards, they forget these memories and act as if these memories never exited, and this phenomena frustrates the man throughout the film. Someone viewers complained that the ending has nothing to do with rest of the film. I interpreted it as Alexander must remember who he is (what happened to his father on that hunting day) in order to stop "stealing" memories from his loved ones. Whenever the memory transmission happens, you can hear a faint clicking sound (the opening scene when his wife told him she is going to marry Francois, the gas station scene when his daughter told him that "he's the best father in the world", the scene when he toasts "for friendship" with his best friend, the scene when his wife told him she will "always love him", the scene when his girlfriend told him "we were in love", and the scene when the gamekeeper told him about the case of gin). I was looking for that clicking sound during the final scene with his brother because I wasn't sure if these images are his brother's or his. There was no clicking sound (his brother's memories was not stolen based on the fact that his brother confirmed what happened verbally after Alexander gained that memory). Alexander was able to break his own curse by finding out the one memory he desperately wants to forget, the one memory that defined who he is. However, I am not sure how he stole the memories of the Indian hunter and the deer. Maybe he stole the deer's memories right when he got hit by the truck (you know it is a big truck because of the sound of horn in the opening), and maybe the deer had the Indian hunter's memory when it encountered one. In the end, we still don't know who hit Alexander, but I don't think that was the point of the story.