Write Here - BFI Flare

‘Having your memories slip away can be terrifying, especially when they are your only way of holding on to your spouse.’

A short and saddening film, Write Here is a BFI Flare selection from The Philippines that documents a brief story about an older gentleman clinging desperately to his memories, despite them being etched with trauma. This is a heart-wrenching film that focuses on a man in the throes of Alzheimer’s and finds it incredibly distressing not to remember everything at the same time. Particularly as his partner has passed away, the man has no other way to remember his love and so tries to invent ways to keep him alive, only to find uncomfortable and distressing thoughts from the past return to haunt him in the process.

This man had absolute power through his memories of love and loss and so, when this begins to fail him, he turns to other frantic measures to prevent himself from forgetting. Each scene cuts to the next in a jarring way as if to represent fragments of memory, but yet the film itself is very sensitively filmed and edited together. Plenty of nostalgia fills the screen as this man is permitted to occasionally reminisce on his past - there are many happy memories of his life and love, as well as sad moments as he remembers who he lost. The viewer sees a man who wants to keep his mind active and in the process, continue to take ownership over his life and thoughts.

Despite the distress that this man is caused by the pain of his past, this is a gentle moving short film that keeps the viewer comfortable in his company. It is as though the protagonist has invited us into his home and the camera gives us his eye line perspective as well as keeping everything on our level. Yet, his solitude can be felt very deeply as the viewer can read between the lines to infer this man’s backstory and who he is as a gay man, as he remembers and must relive the pain all over again. This is a very hard-hitting and emotional film that recognises that LGBTQ+ people grow old too and have all the real lived experiences of humanity such as losing a partner.

Write Here is an incredibly tear-jerking viewing experience that highlights the fear and pain of memory loss. It is rare to see conditions like Alzheimers be authentically portrayed from an LGBTQ+ perspective and this film has beautifully conceptualized these themes in a sensitive, well-written short.