User Reviews

Here is a virtually unknown work, judging by the absence of comments, reviews and even plot summary on this database, that is just crying out for discovery. If I can draw attention to relatively unknown worthies such as "Chemins de l'exil","The Gamekeeper" and now this, then my comments will have served their most useful function. When I first saw "Remember Me This Way" as part of a Russian film season on British TV I was unaware that it had been made for TV, so cinematic was its presentation. It is a powerful study of a dysfunctional family with a central matriarchal figure living in Leningrad who is visited by her family on her birthday. There must be a formidably strong sense of family loyalty at work here for, in almost every way, the cantankerous old girl hardly deserves such devotion. Her treatment of her daughter, who has stayed around to look after her, is on a par with Gladys Cooper's of Bette Davis in "Now, Voyager". And then there is her political bigotry, her dogged adherence to old style communism at a time when her whole family is questioning such values. The family visit is of course a disaster in almost every sense. As a portent a mirror catches on a blowing curtain and comes crashing to the ground shortly before they arrive. The son's former wife and children turn up as well as his present one. His ex, a formidable magistrate, is almost a match for his mother, so is guaranteed to turn the emotional tension notches even higher. When the son and grandson can stand the interior drama no longer they wander into the bleakest courtyard imaginable. Water drips form broken guttering and an alcoholic crone gathers bottles in an old pram. But there is a sort of reconciliation at the end when the mother invites the family to partake of a bizarre communion with a piece of almost fossilized bread saved from her rations during the siege of Leningrad and now dipped in red wine. It is as if the family finally come round to acquiescing with her dogma. I found this ending totally strange but oddly moving. Certainly this is an emotionally charged film that deserves to be better known. It almost has the potential for a cult following.