ANOTHER END - Mark Reviews Movies

Another End, Sunrise Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 18, 2025

Ultimately, Another End raises more logistical questions than philosophical or emotional ones. The movie wants us to think about ramifications of its premise, in which the consciousness and memories of a dead person are implanted into a different person, and feel the impact of its characters interacting with the idea, since it is mostly about having a second chance to say farewell to a lost loved one. Instead, we're mostly left wondering how the mechanics of this process works, about the assorted ethical issues that arise with it, and why the screenplay finally ignores all of those things in favor of trying to surprise us in the final minutes.

In theory, the core idea here is intriguing. It is sometime in the future, and a company called Another End has ability to retrieve and archive the memories of the dead. Do not ask how this is possible, whether the process is voluntary—akin to agreeing to becoming an organ donor—or just standard practice, or why there seems to be a deadline for the storage of individual memories, when our protagonist Sal (Gael García Bernal) can easily access the recollections of his dead girlfriend from the comfort of his apartment.

It is best, perhaps, to ignore such practical interrogations of this conceit, and to be fair to director Piero Messina (who co-wrote the screenplay with Giacomo Bendotti, Valentina Gaddi, and Sebastiano Melloni), the story isn't about the technical side of the process anyway. Sal, whose girlfriend Zoe died in a car accident some years ago and whose memories are scheduled to be deleted from the company's archives soon, is still in grief. His sister Ebe (Bérénice Bejo), who works for Another End, wants him to agree to having Zoe's memories transplanted to a "host" body, so that he might have some closure on her death that was not possible due to the sudden circumstances of it.

This results in what's something of an elaborately orchestrated bit of living theater. Zoe's mind, transferred into the body of a woman played by Renate Reinsve, must be convinced that she survived the crash and that her life will go on after a quick visit to the hospital. This is enough, apparently, for Zoe's mind to accept that the body it currently inhabits, even though it is a completely different body, is still her own.

Everyone in Zoe's life, including her hesitant parents (played by Angela Bain and Philip Rosch), must maintain this illusion, because the mind would reject the body if it ever learned the truth. Let's just say that it's very convenient that Zoe was a writer who mostly stayed at home, lest the screenplay have to account for how this bit of communal playacting would work for someone with a regular office job or a busy social life.

Most of the story becomes about Sal trying to convince himself of several things. The first and most important one, of course, is that this stranger is, in the ways that really matter, his girlfriend. Another is that the time Sal spends with this version of Zoe is so that time will inevitably come to an end, when he will reveal that she died and say everything he didn't but wanted to say while she was alive as a last goodbye. This is all a very understandable form of wish fulfillment made into a sort-of reality, and when the movie perceives and portrays Sal and this relationship in that way, it can be thoughtful and affecting on the subject of grief.

Some might note a significant gap in the screenplay's thinking here. It is all about the person/people on the other side of this equation, namely the mind of the dead person and the host. What is the point, for example, of the mind of the dead person being informed of its death? One of Sal's neighbors, played by Olivia Williams and who is one of apparently several just in this apartment building who have agreed to this procedure with their own dead loved ones, explains what it was like when she had to tell both her dead husband and dead daughter that they had died. The description of what happened in that moment comes across as cruel and traumatic for everyone involved in it. Surely, that's the point of the filmmakers, but it makes us again wonder if this company and its assorted experts have any idea what they're doing when it comes to the supposed therapeutic nature of this process.

Eventually, Sal begins wondering about and following the life of the host when she isn't convinced that she's Zoe. This turn is a strange one, mainly because the woman, named Ava, is more of an idea—of economic desperation and grief of her own—than an actual character. There's a tantalizing idea here, in that the process relies on people who cannot afford it themselves in order to function, but since Ava merely exists as a concept of that notion and of Sal's obsession, it rings hollow.

Most of Another End, unfortunately, reveals itself to be shallow. That's particularly noticeable when the movie pulls one final rug from under the entire story—one that really highlights the logistical and narrative shortcomings of its script.

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