Festivals: Cannes (Critics’ Week) 1998; NZ Film Festivals 1998

“Aucklander Niki Caro’s first feature is a handsomely framed, intimately observed love story — and a mystery about the tragic death of a young Japanese husband on his New Zealand honeymoon. Like only The Piano before it amongst New Zealand movies, it is a love story steeped in eroticism, its narrative shaped by the development of an intense and troubled love affair. Caro’s screenplay is based on a story from Peter Wells’ Dangerous Desires, inspired by a news item regarding a young Japanese woman found living in a cave on a New Zealand beach. Moved by the force of the young woman’s devotion to the memory of her husband, Caro has used the story to explore a strength of heart which she describes as distinctively female. Those expecting Memory and Desire to entirely respect its Japanese provenance will be dismayed by the fact that its Japanese characters speak English, but no one could doubt the purity of emotion illuminated on screen by Yuri Kinugawa in the lead role. Her Sayo is a woman already accustomed to thinking of herself as plain, beyond marriage, when a most unexpected relationship develops with Keiji, a quietly charming, handsome younger man. Kinugawa’s portrayal of Sayo’s ardent pleasure in her young lover and her determination to liberate him, with all due respect, from his formidable, jealous mother, is entirely credible and extremely moving. The film’s cool pictorial formalism eliminates any hint of sentimentality in its devastating sadness. The landscape of Japanese honeymoon tours is as imposingly green, moist and indifferent as it was when Dion Beebe last shot it in Crush. There are visual echoes too of Vincent Ward and it is fascinating to see a young feature filmmaker addressing the world so confidently in a visual language so recognisably forged in New Zealand.” — Bill Gosden, New Zealand Film Festivals, 1998

“Memory and Desire more than repays the investment that some critics have made in Niki Caro. Repays it big time. I had been anticipating a film as good as this from Caro ever since I first came across her work by accident, in 1993, when her short, The Summer the Queen Came, screened on TV. I was staggered – here was someone who, like no other local filmmaker since Vincent Ward or Jane Campion (Campion is an especially apt comparison), had got to the heart of something quintessential about New Zealand, about New Zealandness. I was struck first by its remarkable, bold black humour and the deceptive flatness of its dialogue – our peculiar unemotional pitch – and then by Caro’s unique visual sense and the great performances she got from her cast (it may still stand as Joel Toebeck’s finest half-hour). There was also a curious sympathy in that film – a palpable affection – and it managed to be ‘quirky’ about ‘Kiwiana’ (normally, two of my least favourite words) without being obvious or foolish. A great, unusual achievement” …. .. Memory and Desire’s major asset is Caro’s supremely cool-headed direction. From frame one, the film is elegant and detached, ever in control. Even through the arc of Sayo and Keiji’s diffidence, passion and separation, Caro never jeopardizes the wry humour that is one of her reliable traits as a writer and director… A close attention to the physical environment runs through Memory and Desire, and cinematographer Dion Beebe gets it all down in a way that is schematic but never overbearing – an intensely claustrophobic Tokyo in the opening scenes, where the only nature is the love hotel’s contrived wilderness; a grey-skied, fecund and unstable New Zealand beyond the tourist route (Caro is as well-served by wild days on the west coast beaches as she is by fine performances from her Japanese leads). Memory and Desire’s coolness also recognizes an odd, reassuring kind of optimism or unbreakable spirit – if finds a path through the grief and loneliness. If one had to make a comparison, its closest relation would be Breaking the Waves. Is it as good as that, though? If not, then it is very close. We shouldn’t still be searching for the export-quality stamp, but here is a New Zealand film that truly is world-class, our first in almost too many years to count (just say that this is the finest local film since Heavenly Creatures and already one of our best films of the decade). I’m as tired of parochialism – of searching desperately for the next big industry saviour – as you probably are, and it feels as if I would be loading Caro up with more pressure than she needs to say that she is easily the best thing that the local film ‘industry’ has going for it right now. Philip Matthews, Listener, 12 September 1998