I like slow-burning films; the idea of being given enough time to really live in the movie you are watching really appeals to me, often more so than faster-paced, spectacular projects. I also like arthouse films; the atmosphere and characters can often be just as engaging, if not more, than a traditionally linear storyline. Thing is, you need to have at least the semblance of a storyline in a film, otherwise, it's like buying a loaf of bread and finding no bread in it!
Memoria is deliberately pitched at a snail's pace. There isn't a storyline as such, but rather a series of events, some of which we return to. Clearly, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who writes and directs, has a vision for this - together, one would presume, with his cast and crew. For the most part, it leaves me cold, and I find myself trying to imagine how Weerasethakul initially tried to communicate what he is trying to achieve here to his actors. I actually felt the makers were taking the mickey, daring me to stick with this when they have no intention of providing much reason to, or indeed any kind of pay-off.
Some will undoubtedly tell me I don't 'get' it, and that's almost certainly true, but I can't honestly see that there is anything *to* get, because with the suspension of disbelief fully installed, all I see here is a group of blandly inoffensive people doing very little except having whispered conversations and being desperately polite to each other in front of an unmoving camera. There were times when I had to wait for someone to blink to convince myself the BluRay hadn't frozen. This left me cold, I'm afraid. My score is 3 out of 10 for some nicely filmed locations.
