Haut et Court – Abbout Productions – Micro_Scope
MOVIE REVIEW
Memory Box (2021)
The layered memories of this film work surprisingly well, both as a historical document and as an uncovering of buried truths. The set-up is simple: Alex (Paloma Vauthier) is 14. She lives in Montreal with her mother, Maia (Rim Turki), after her father has left them to start a new family in France. Alex and her grandmother Téta (Clémence Sabbagh) are getting ready for Christmas when a large box is delivered; the grandmother pales and insists it should be hidden away. Alex, obviously, snoops. The box has been sent from the family of Maia’s teenage best friend Julie, who has recently died without Maia’s knowledge. It contains the extensive journals, photographs and cassettes that teenage Maia (Manal Issa) obsessively made for Julie, so they could keep in touch after Julie’s family left Beirut in the mid-’80s. Alex knows nothing of any of this – not of the war in Lebanon, not of her family history, and not of what her mother was like when she was young. So she snoops some more.