Director: Sylvia Robyn Gionti
Running time: 3mins
Regular readers will recognise the name Sylvia Robyn Gionti, the filmmaker behind For your memory. Just over a month ago, she used inanimate objects to much acclaim in absurdist short-comedy The futility of quitting smoking – and this follow-up does something similar, albeit for very different ends.
For your memory is a three-minute piece on the grieving process, featuring a drawing-reference-mannequin who is left struggling with the loss of a loved one – here embodied by a prop skull. Stop-motion photography sees a beige cloth draped over the skull, before the grave site is sealed with assorted pebbles, and wreathed in a floral tribute. The mannequin pays their respects, standing with a bowed head, casting a long shadow across the burial site against the setting sun – in one of the film’s most striking images.
It is here I need to address one of the film’s chief shortcomings. Striking though the image (or a number of others) might be, Gionti’s mode of animation utilises too few frames for anything to feel like it has genuinely come to life. As the mannequin exits to the right of the screen, the little body disappears in just two or three jerking leaps, which not only undermines the sombre mood of the previous moment (you would expect a sad and slow shuffle from view), but makes it feel more like we are watching a hastily assembled slideshow than a film.
As harsh as it seems for such an evocative subject, that means much of what we see feels like lone images, rather than a scene from a movie. And while The futility of quitting smoking’s lead cigarette never ‘moved’ as such, it was shot as a still-life with on a film-file – so when the rest of the world interacted with the prop in real-time, as though it were sentient, it came to life for us. It was cinematic, in a way that is slightly lacking in For your memory.
Where this film does deliver, however, is the emotional core of its content. Looking beyond the technical delivery of the mannequin’s story, the listless way in which the character stands in the ‘garden’ (a balcony pot plant), or the way they toss and turn in their gigantic, empty bed a such profoundly upsetting reflections of a psyche cut adrift, lost in the loss of a loved one. Underscored by a wonderfully surreal piece of music by Giorgos Kalogeropoulos – a haunting piano melody accompanied by a warped and wavering voice, which further illustrates the turmoil the character is experiencing in the void they find themselves in – we go through a range of emotions, from despair to acceptance (and maybe even hope) with the mannequin in a truly remarkable manner.
So, while I might split hairs about movement, Gionti has still imbued another inanimate object with identifiable humanity. In doing so, she has caused us to suspend our disbelief in the ridiculousness of the scenario, to get us to empathise with that constructed character.
Most importantly, having accrued that emotional capital, Gionti uses it in a hard-hitting, evocative conclusion. In the film’s final moments, the mannequin approaches a picture frame with a very real face staring out from it. ‘In memory of Vangelis Chatzinikolaou’ the final title-card reads – in a move that has left me reeling for the eight hours since I watched it. What a wonderful tribute, and a deeply personal, bitter-sweet experience to have shared with audiences – one I’m sure will help to remind viewers that as desolate as things seem, they are not alone in their darkest hours.
I didn’t know what to say about this film when I first watched it. At the end of the working day, I still find myself in that position. Obviously, I feel an obligation to provide my view points on the technical aspects of the film so that its creator might ‘improve’ next time – that’s literally my job. But frankly, if Sylvia Robyn Gionti has managed to knock me off balance in such a way with a film centred on a grieving mannequin, how much does it really matter that I would have liked a more fluid form of animation to deliver that story? In the grand scheme of things, not much.
This is Sylvia Robyn Gionti. Thank you for the review. I agree with you that I as well would have liked to add more frames to the film. However, this mannequin was the most articulated figurine I had available. Before filming, I pushed the mannequin to its limit to see what it is capable of, while careful not break it. Turns out it has pretty limited movement. During filming, I got so jealous of the highly articulated figurines that they use in high budget stop motion film like Coraline and Pinnochio. I could have done so much more with one of them. It was suggested to me to use AI to enhance the movement, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that idea. Moreover, having the mannequin sliding through the scene while staying in the exact same pose felt kind of silly, so I opted for a few key frames.
I would like to also thank Giorgos Kalogeropoulos for the great piece of music that he wrote and recorded in one morning. And this is a nitpick, but you mispelled the last name of Vangelis Chatzinikolaou, not blaming you though, some greek last names are notoriously long and hard to spell. I even mispelled it on the first cut of the film, and its my native language, I had to check his name twice before releasing the final cut.