Mémorable is a 2019 animated short film from France, directed by Bruno Collet.
Louis is a painter and a gray-haired older man, who lives with his wife Michelle, and often paints her portrait. At dinner with his wife, he has a strange difficulty picking up the pepper shaker and giving it to her. He makes a comment about Michelle's mother which seems to indicate that he does not know that his mother-in-law has been dead for 20 years.
He is soon diagnosed with dementia. Soon he is sometimes failing to recognize his wife. As Louis's memory and cognitive abilities deteriorate, he perceives his world in an increasingly strange and distorted way.
Animator Bruno Collet was inspired by the painting of William Utermohlen, who continued to paint for several years after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.
Tropes:
- Art Imitates Art: The night sky around Louis and Michelle's house suddenly changes from a plain design into something that strongly resembles Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. This symbolizes how Louis's deteriorating ability to perceive his world manifests as a sort of expressionism.
- Black Comedy: A scene both mordantly funny and sad. Louis, in despair, picks up a gun that's lying on the counter in his bathroom. He puts it to his temple and pulls the trigger—and the "gun" turns out to be a hair dryer.
- Call-Back: At the end. Louis's deterioration is first signaled when he makes a comment about Michelle's mother having bad taste, forgetting that she has been dead for 20 years. At the end when Louis is so far gone that he thinks it's 1965 and he is meeting Michelle for the first time, he says that it must be difficult living with her mother. Michelle, who is humoring him, says "She has bad taste."
- "Just Joking" Justification: Michelle has caught Louis confusing his reflection in the mirror for another person. Louis, obviously humiliated, tries to pass it off a joke, saying "You should see your face! You believed me! What a fool!"
- The Ken Burns Effect: An unconventional use of this trope to start the cartoon, as the camera pans over paintings in extreme close-up, making the brush strokes and paint deposits look like hills and valleys.
- Mirror Monologue: Michelle hears an agitated conversation coming from the bathroom. She opens the door to find that Louis has mistaken his own reflection for another person, and is apologizing to the mirror.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Played for tragedy. At first, Louis does things like try to eat a banana without peeling it. Later, he believes he's in 1965, and he's basically re-living his first meeting with Michelle.
- Stop Motion: Stop-motion with papier-mâché.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Louis has put post-it notes all over his study, to remind himself of what objects in the room are for—the desk lamp has a little drawing of the sun on it. Michelle sees this and says "What's this, a new concept? How original!" Louis says "Let's go with that."
- Through the Eyes of Madness: To Bruno, as his condition deteriorates, his world appears stranger and stranger. When he is unable to understand what a cell phone is, this is shown as the cell phone, to Bruno's eyes, looking like a bizarre melted object. When his family comes over for dinner, the faces of his children and grandchildren are distorted and bizarre, indicating that he doesn't recognize them. At the end, when he is totally unable to recognize Michelle, he perceives her as a mostly transparent person marked out by only a few daubs of paint.
