The Taste of Mango, 2023.
Written and Directed by Chloe Abrahams.
SYNOPSIS:
A personal meditation on family, memory, violence, and love. An artistic documentary charting the relationships and stories of three women; the director’s mother Rozana; her grandmother, Jean; and the director herself.
The beautifully produced and crafted The Taste of Mango brings out an artistic view of the events that have shaped the lives and relationships of three generations.
The film’s creator, Chloe Abrahams, uncovers a wealth of memories and interwoven stories surrounding her mother, grandmother, and her. Powerfully poetic, the film showcases an artist’s view of the ever-changing nature of the internal world, with narrative voiceovers provided over carefully selected moving image. A close-up of an always moving procession of tiny insects across a surface, a train moving along its tracks, and a family cat steadily moving towards its human all add to the meditative nature of this impressive personal document which is nuanced in scope, but also universal in tone.
I say universal, because families all over the world, whether in Sri Lanka, or the UK, or all over the world, have experienced the combination of joy and love intermingled with resentment and trauma as expressed so articulately in this film. What Abrahams has done is turn familial stories that go back for forty or more years and fine-tune them into a dream-like exploration. Looking at the different ways we in turn protect and hurt the ones we love; the film is a strong reminder that life is all about perception and experience.
At the heart of the film are the director’s mother Rozana; her grandmother, Jean; and the director herself, Chloe. As a child, Chloe was aware of the tensions between mother and grandmother and would dream of a time when they would be happy, or at least content. Growing up in the UK, she had been aware of her grandmother’s troubled marriage in Sri Lanka, as well as the pain and unhappiness of her mother. As a young adult, Chloe spends time with her mother and grandmother, both in the UK and in Colombo, Sri Lanka, sensitively listening to their stories.
What emerges from the interviews is a delicately layered personal family portrait of coping with physical, sexual and emotional abuse, the damage of resentful estrangement, and the possibility of healing and reconciliation.
Drawing on her experience as a portrait painter and video artist, Chloe delivers an assured piece deploying cinematic language to tell the stories that have gone unsaid for so long. Pushing the camera into intense close-ups of her subjects offers a literal grasp at looking these issues in the eye. Confronting the painful past via voiceover and metaphoric images provides an overall experience of realising these people’s lives.
Sound and music are also vitally important; a soothing score by Suren Seneviratne merges with 1970s American country and Western songs. This sometimes uneasy mix is another telling metaphor.
The total project is a fascinating study, where time, dreams, and personal memory mingle in an emotive vision of the past, present, and future.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert W Monk
Originally published November 20, 2024. Updated November 27, 2024.
