SGIFF Review: Don’t You Let Me Go (2024)
Guest Writer Khushi Pai navigates a refreshing intimacy in Don’t You Let Me Go (2024).
In a cinematic landscape awash with explorations of love and loss, Don’t You Let Me Go (2024) stands apart as a story which is deeply intimate and profoundly universal. Uruguayan filmmakers Leticia Jorge and Ana Guevara, who won the Nora Ephron Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, created a film that inhabits the delicate space where grief and hope coexist. Their artistry lies in restraint, wielding subtlety and poetic precision to perfect the timeless mantra, "show, don’t tell."
The film begins with an ending: a funeral. Elena (Vicky Jorge), whose sudden departure leaves an unfillable void, is remembered in fragments, in the jagged shards of laughter and tears shared by those she left behind. Her warmth, her iridescent humour, her penchant for concocting overly sweet drinks. All these details coalesce into a mosaic of a life once vibrantly lived. In this gathering of mourners, the tension is palpable, as grief finds no clear boundary, spilling unbidden into the mundane and the absurd. Children also run with reckless abandon through the funeral hall, a jarring contrast to the solemnity of the occasion, captured with aching precision by Yarará Rodríguez’s cinematography. Though the funeral is suffocating, it also becomes more than just a site of mourning, instead transforming into a vibrant tableau where laughter and gossip coexist, where bonds are reforged amid the chaos of emotion. The women, in particular, dominate these scenes with raw camaraderie, their laughter dissolving into sobs in ways that feel heartbreakingly real. It is this tension, this cruel yet tender juxtaposition, that defines the film’s soul.
Amid this intricate tapestry of memory and sorrow, the character of Adela (Chiara Hourcade) emerges as the emotional nucleus. Adela’s reluctance to let go manifests in the smallest of gestures: a sprig of baby’s breath, taken from Elena’s casket, becomes her talisman, a delicate thread connecting her to a past that feels too vital to relinquish. Jorge and Guevara understand that grief is never a linear journey; that it meanders, intrudes, and sometimes blindsides us in moments of levity. Adela’s struggle is raw, unvarnished, and painfully relatable, and her silence as eloquent as her tears.
In one of the film’s most spellbinding sequences, Adela, crushed by the weight of her sorrow, finds herself transported, quite literally, into a memory. A passing bus casts a shadow over the flower she holds, and without hesitation, she steps aboard, abandoning the present. What follows is a dreamlike escape into a sun-drenched weekend, where Elena is alive and vibrant, waiting at a beach house with detective novels, bicycles, and the night stretching endlessly ahead. For a fleeting moment, time itself bends, not to erase grief but to hold it at bay, allowing a friendship frozen in amber to glow once more.
This surreal interlude elevates Don’t You Let Me Go beyond conventional narratives about grief. This is not merely a film about mourning; it is a meditation on memory’s alchemy, on the strange and wondrous ways we revisit the ones we love. Jorge and Guevara achieve what few filmmakers dare by blurring the line between fantasy and reality so seamlessly that the surreal feels as tangible as the sand beneath Adela’s feet. Its exploration of memory recalls an earlier film with great cultural significance, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) but eschews high-concept mechanics in favour of emotional authenticity.
The intimacy of the film is further elevated by its sensory richness. Jorge and Guevara ground the fantastical elements in tactile, human moments— Elena’s insistence on sugary drinks, the shared cadence of post-punk music, and the languid conversations about life’s minutiae. Every detail evokes a synesthetic intimacy, immersing viewers in a sensory-rich world. Coupled with Rodríguez’s cinematography, with its recurring motifs of reflections and lingering close-ups, this creates a world where memory and reality bleed into one another. In one moment, Adela pours sand from her shoe with almost ceremonial reverence, and in another, she and Elena dissolve into a painting of a boat adrift at sea. These moments of magical realism serve not as distractions, but amplifications of the film’s emotional truths.
Furthermore, the film’s pacing also slows into a meditative rhythm. Adela and Elena’s bond radiates a sensuous warmth, whether they are lounging with detective novels, or watching beachgoers with quiet amusement. Even when joined by Luci (Eva Dans) and her infant son, these moments of female companionship retain their effortless authenticity. Together, these elements create a seamless and deeply moving meditation on the fragile beauty of shared time.
Yet, the narrative does not shy away from ambiguity. Hints of unspoken desire between Adela and Elena flicker like candlelight, never fully illuminated but always present. Their closeness— a shared toothbrush and using the bathroom in each other’s presence, a lingering inhalation of Elena’s scent— suggests a bond that may transcend the platonic, leaving the viewer to wonder: is Adela’s grief also the mourning of a love unspoken? The film offers no answers, only questions, trusting its audience to navigate the uncharted waters of their own interpretations.
As the film concludes, it resists neatly tying its threads, offering instead an invitation; a quiet nudge to cherish the absurd, joy-filled moments with those who matter most. Life is impermanent; the connections we forge are fragile, often fraying before we are ready. Yet, in memory and mourning, those threads are rewoven, their texture altered but their essence enduring.
Don’t You Let Me Go, then, is not merely a film, but an elegy for the living and the lost. Jorge and Guevara have given us a work that does not demand to be understood but felt, carried, and cherished long after the credits fade. It reminds us that grief and love are not opposites but mirror images, each defined by the other. And in the smallest details, be it the sweetness of a drink, the rhythm of a song, or the weight of a flower, we find the fragments of those we have loved that linger in the quiet corners of our hearts, whispering, always, “don’t you let me go.”