Memory
Written and Directed by Michel Franco
Starring Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, and Merritt Wever
MPAA Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Now playing in theaters

by Megan Robinson, Staff Writer

Before one has even seen the first five minutes of Michel Franco’s latest film Memory, there’s a dour air that fills the screen. The colors are drab, the camera is close, and we watch tearful reminiscence of what it means to the other members of Alcoholics Anonymous that Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) has been able to stay sober for 13 years. There’s some relief in this opening set piece, at least for the audience — Sylvia is a down to earth character, living amongst everyday people. Soon after, we see she walks back to her apartment with her daughter Anna (Brooke Timber), and the next day they’re back up, ready to face the day despite their broken refrigerator. Here lies Memory’s central contradiction, where cliche plot points and confusing choices are balanced by the breath of fresh air provided by the characters, in all their messy mistakes and traumas.

The most notable aspect of Memory is how Franco directs and edits, with Óscar Figueroa, each scene. Most scenes are shot from a distance with few cuts, allowing the performers to fully work off each other as well as forcing the audience to sit with the characters in each scene. Every scene lingers, every emotion or lack thereof felt in its entirety. Of course, this approach can grow a bit dull, especially as each shot tends to stay still, the camera not acting as an extension of each scene’s emotions. Much like the entire film, these choices are a strength as much as a weakness — some scenes deserve to go on for much longer than expected, such as Sylvia confronting her mother Samantha (Jessica Harper) about the abuse Sylvia endured as a child, while others can convey little despite their commitment to showing and not telling.

This approach to the film could only be as successful as its actors. According to the voting body of the Venice Film Festival, the film’s lead performance from Peter Sarsgaard as Saul was Volpi Cup worthy, and it’s true, at least, that his performance is engaging and naturalistic. The entire cast gives muted performances that add to the film’s grounded approach, with its leads allowing their silences to speak as loud as their dialogue. Sylvia and Saul, after meeting when he follows her home from their high school reunion in a haze fueled by his dementia, begin to fall in love, and each performer allows vulnerability to take over. A tearful embrace in the bathtub between Sylvia and Saul, after Sylvia and Samantha’s confrontation, quickly turns to laughter, as Saul falls in with his clothes on. Without much dialogue, the two are able to breathe and love as real human beings — their love and support for each other is visualized effortlessly. 

Tonally, Memory suffers from an inconsistency that is difficult to pinpoint as intentional. After all, this romance between Sylvia and Saul begins with an awkward flirtation of Saul sitting next to Sylvia at their high school reunion, then quickly turns into a tense sequence of Sylvia walking home, Saul stalking in the distance just behind her. Later, Sylvia meets his family and discovers his dementia, offering to go for a walk with him. She asks him, over and over again, if he remembers assaulting her as a child — evidently, he does not, but we’re told it’s because they never met as children. Those opening moments are hard to shake for the entirety of the movie; can a great love story be born out of fear and misremembered trauma? In Memory, this unease can’t be shaken, but the tension never builds to an explosion, instead just lying there as if it hopes you forget any of it ever happened.

Overall, Memory is a mixed bag of raw cinema and cliched drama. An actor often longs for a role as challenging as Sarsgaard has, but he never taps into the sappier, insensitive Hollywood sensibilities one might expect. In other aspects, those sensibilities peak through, as in the revelation of Sylvia’s past being even more traumatic than we believed, with Samantha spewing cliches like “he never touched you.” Memory is all at once an honest and refreshing drama that mostly escapes the narrative pitfalls of a generic Hollywood tragedy. It does not, however, escape a messy tone that leaves one more confused than anything by the film’s end.