The Pier [Like Mending Glass] (2017)

• 79%
• 2017
• Comedy
• Documentary
• Anna Hogg

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.