A large empty house sits in the suburbs of Australia, where an old man named Chris sits, lost in thought. Chris is an elderly man who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and he’s desperately trying to hold onto his slowly shattering mind.
His son Michael comes in to check up on his dad periodically, but as Chris’s mind flutters between past and present, the line between the two begin to blur in ways both beautiful and painful.
A gentle, evocative film suffused with melancholy, this short drama — which won a director’s prize at Cannes — is gorgeously shot. The stunning images capture with precision the nature of memory loss and deterioration as the camera drifts through Chris’s memories.
Patient, dreamlike, sensitive and a touch surreal, “Where Do Lilacs Come From” evokes the tragedy of Alzheimer’s with a gentle respect, and its sense of poetry and beauty get at the heart of love, memory, family and loss in a way that will linger with you, long after the film ends.
