7/10
Dark memories
15 April 2024
A short film on the power of memories and how they affect our perception of life, our way of life and how we perceive important parts of our lives that seemed so far gone to the point of becoming almost harmless - but they never are. "Robert Taylor's Way of Walking" tells us about a former exiled man (Ênio Gonçalves) who returns to Brazil during the amnesty and recollects some events during the hard years of military regime when he was a political activist persecuted by authorities, and he fell in love with a beautiful young woman (Cláudia Magno) who helped him with his cause.

In between the memories, as he revisits a changed town that he can only remembers what used to be there, his recollection brings back mostly the last day he met his girlfriend while they were on the active, and later on he got arrested and tortured; and also the last meeting with her after his release. He holds some good memories from the place, but those haunts him back to the tragedy of a lost relationship, almost the loss of his life.

I don't know how Roberto Drummond's short story was told, and if he actually explains or describes the title which relates with the Classic Hollywood film star (the film doesn't explain either except for a film the lead character watches, of which we can only hear and get its title on a cinema marquise). The short film creates some division of everything that for some brief moments one can imagine that some of the man's memories as being a projection, a fantasy of how he imagined things happening. Or they could also be the real thing. We'll never know, and that's the beauty of it all.

The challenge on viewers is to find some reality on such memories, if real or not, or if the perception of them was altered because he wanted a definition on things that could explain why he was arrested and if the girl had a part on it. He needs that definition since nostalgia isn't helping him anymore.

A well acted piece, with some nice suspense touches but at times it feels like there's something missing. 7/10.
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