Nils Janlert | Minnet av dig (The Memory of You) / 2015

what now is

by Douglas Messerli

 

Nils Janlert (screenwriter and director) Minnet av dig (The Memory of You) / 2015 [12 minutes]

 

Filmed by Swedish director Nils Janlert in one long shot between three locations, a small restaurant, an art gallery across the street, and the street itself, The Memory of You might be said to be a very short gay version of Sydney Pollack’s The Way We Were (1973), although in relation to this film the title of the 1973 film has even stronger implications.

     The way Adam (Emil T. Jonsson) “was” is gay, living in a deep, loving relationship with Erik (Mikael Bergsten). What broke them apart we never discover, although both admit to stupid mistakes. But now, on this particular evening, Adam is taking his wife out to a small restaurant when he notices, across the street, that Erik—whom he has evidently not seen for years (Adam has had two children in the period since)—is having an art show.

    Making up an excuse of having left his wallet behind in the car, Adam leaves his wife for more than a few moments to meet up again with Erik.

    The two immediately call up their old feelings, their deep love, and clear regrets. Erik has even finished a painting of the two of them titled “True Love.” Accompanied by the rumble of a deep bass organ, the two hint at a life of intense romance, a relationship that was “special,” which they both long for and miss. Yet, as Adam makes clear through his heterosexual shift, there is no turning back, even with Erik’s almost meaningless pleading to possibly be given a second chance.

     Adam crosses the street once more and renters the world he has since moved onto, presumably enjoying a pleasant dinner with his wife, Anna (Kerstin Gandler).

 

    Apparently bisexual, Adam perhaps can continue to be the loving father of a son and daughter which Erik has always said he would be. But what can only trouble the viewer of this dirge of a past love, is that Adam evidently still feels so very deeply in love with man, as he puts it, of “a lifetime ago.” The very fact that he admits he still misses Erik, does not bode well for his marriage. If nothing else there will remain in his life a deep nostalgia, an emptiness that Anna’s love will never quite be able to fill simply because of its “difference,” because of the way he “was,” as opposed as the way he is. And if a single encounter on a night on the town restimulates such intense feelings, one can only wonder if a night of doubt, a day of despair might trigger even greater nostalgia and doubts about the now of his life.

       As the reviewer of Gaycelluloid.com observes: “Nils Janlert vividly taps into the emotions of what could have been, over what now is.” And by filming this work in a single shot, the director clearly links Adam’s past to the present.

     The only fear that Adam might have is that his present may always remain wrapped up in a notion of that past, becoming stronger and more emotionally binding as his life moves ahead, filling it with the sublimated regret he even demonstrates on the single evening we witness in this film. For the way he was might surely destroy the way he is unless he has fully explained his past life to his wife, which his lie about his wallet hints he has not.

 

Los Angeles, July 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).