Memories of a Burning Body Film Review

Memories of a Burning Body is an honest portrayal of what it means to be a woman, with all its beauty and hardship.

The narration of their memories is told off-screen but accompanied on-screen by actors of various ages who embody every single story as we hear its first-person recollection through the voiceover. 

The movie starts with sound rather than visuals. The audience’s first approach to these women’s stories is through their voices over a black screen before a shaky hand-held camera introduces us to the protagonist as she gets ready for this shoot. She is not the main character of these stories: instead, she is the actress who is going to embody all of them. Memories of a Burning Body begins by showing us the filming and recording process. This shows that the film is not only aware of its status as a hybrid documentary but also ready to invite the audience to reflect on it.

There is a lot in the movie that is not traditionally associated with documentary filmmaking – re-enactments make up the majority of the film – but it still very much feels like a documentary in the way it approaches its story. What we see may be a work of fiction, as the movie uses an actress to recreate the story we see on screen, but the voices accompanying it are the actual recordings of the women who lived through these events. 

The focus on their voice first and foremost is also a powerful statement, because it highlights the film’s intention to highlight these women’s voices and stories from the very beginning. Memories of a Burning Body gives a voice to women who would otherwise never have one. As they give us a recollection of their life, they touch on taboo topics that make up their lives, such as their relationship with their sexuality, motherhood, and heartbreaking stories of abuse. We soon realise that these are topics that women of their generation  were never allowed to discuss in their own homes, let alone this freely in a movie. 

As Memories of a Burning Body goes on, each of these women shares their inner self with the audience. One of them recalls how she managed to divorce her abusive husband, something that was highly uncommon and frowned upon at the time, another talks about feeling sexually unfulfilled in her marriage and the challenges of motherhood and wanting to be the perfect wife. Admittedly, we see a lot of suffering in their stories, but there is also joy in their narration. The protagonists also recount their most beautiful memories such as having a child, exploring their sexuality and desires even in old age, and – perhaps most importantly – still creating a good life for themselves despite everything they endured. 

The three women may be different, but their stories all speak to the reality of that generation and the societal pressure and strict gender norms they were under. In this sense, the film acts as a connection between today’s generation and those that came before them. “This film is the connection I never had with my grandmothers,” reads the first of a series of intertitles in Memories of a Burning Body. Antonella Sudassani Fruniss, the writer and director of the movie, may not have been able to have this type of conversation with her own grandmothers, but now she can do so in cinematic terms.

In a world where women are constantly fearing – and trying to fight – signs of ageing, it feels very refreshing to see a film focus on older women – a category that is very rarely seen as the protagonist of their own story on the big screen in an industry that tends to prefer younger-looking women – as well as their memories and their desires. Memories of a Burning Body, instead, shows us the reality of being  a woman of that generation and upbringing.  

Overall, Memories of a Burning Body truly feels like a conversation lost in time that many of us in the audience were never actually able to have with our grandmothers and mothers. This may be the filmmaker’s own connection she never had with her grandmother, but it can quickly become all of ours with the women who came before us. While painting a picture of womanhood, the movie manages to create a connection between the people in the audience and the generation that came before us through the women whose stories were captured in this film.  

Memories of a Burning Body will be released in UK & Irish cinemas on November 15, 2024. The film is Costa Rica’s nomination for the Academy Awards Foreign Language feature.