The Pier [Like Mending Glass]

The filmmaker’s grandfather, suffering from Alzheimer’s, remembers, obsessively, an episode from his youth: an elegant young woman climbs over the railing of the pier and jumps into the water; he saves her. The old man’s speech becomes more confused; the women of his family repeat the story, now become mythical, using re-speaking techniques inspired by “verbatim theater”; the filmmaker reconstructs the scene, casting a young woman whose blonde chignon brings to mind Vertigo’s Madeleine. Yet the moment comes when the grandfather has to be brought to a nursing home, where, gradually, he fades away. His mind, his breathing, fly away with the passing time, along the flowing water. The last image that stays with him, is that of the pier…