"Who owns our memories? What happens when people get divorced or separated? Can we prevent someone from having memories of us? No."
These are some of the Fragments of a love biography, by Chloé Barreau, which can be seen during the month of April thanks to Docs of the Month, the magnificent initiative of DocsBarcelona that brings documentary film to theaters. Barreau revisits her love life through the voices of former lovers, which for her is the most important part of life. This journey through relationships is a profound reflection on love from different points of view and, at the same time, a journey into our own past. Barreau, of whom we barely see any images because the absolute protagonists are the people with whom she has had a romantic relationship, has been an analog, practically museum-like archivist of these romances. Since the age of 16, she has recorded and photographed everything, and these objects, images, and letters are part of the journey through time in which people reconnect with their past to smile at it, cry at it, detest it, yearn for it. Exes talk about her but not with her, and they talk about themselves without the replica of thelover, which doesn't aim to contrast but to expose. There's no moral judgment. Only the story of love, drawn from the voices that shaped it. They reread letters they wrote, which were part of a mood, a desire, or a goodbye. Years later, they look back at that story they had, and the viewer can see the open wounds, the traces in the eyes of youthful love, the nostalgia for the days lived, the erased moments and those that endure. What do we remember? How she moved, how she spoke, what she did with her hands, the parts of her body, how she danced, how she woke up, how she kissed, the sex. We don't often remember it, we fantasize, because the passage of time allows us to fill in the gaps in memory, making them less painful and less brutal, or more intense and more passionate. "We invent our past," says one of the interviewees. "I think the past is more mysterious than the future," says another.
When does love end? Does it end forever? Why are we less forgiving in romantic relationships than in other types of relationships? "We can hurt each other in love, but there are consequences. As a consequence, we are no longer friends. But sometimes lovers can become friends." Friendship after love. Friendship before love. The love of friendship. Sex as detachment from confusion and as confusion itself. Do we give badly by wanting to? Unintentionally? Why does it seem that some people fall in love with the people who hurt them the most, and why are there people who cannot fall in love? What is the great betrayal of love? Even now, despite recognizing the general anomaly of monogamy in our long lives, sexual infidelity is treated as one of the great betrayals. But what really betrays a romantic relationship? When does heartbreak begin, and how many times have we experienced the strangeness of feeling it?
"To whom do our memories belong?" In human relationships, nothing belongs exclusively to us. Giving voice to other perspectives is an exercise in humility and awareness. We are who we are because of this fabric of bodies and conversations. Because of these landscapes of nostalgia that make us look again at the ills we have yet to heal and the treasures we have deeply hidden. Love is the best thing there is. And life is what happens while we learn to love and be loved.
