Summary

Memory is a film filled with excellent acting that captivates viewers in the moment, despite its thematic shortcomings. The movie explores trauma and memory, but falls short in delving deeper into these issues. The performances in Memory, particularly by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, are captivating and make the film worth watching.

Editor’s note: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.

As a critic, one firmly held belief of mine is that great acting can be blinding. A cast or even single performer operating at the top of their game can be so mesmerizing that we leave a theater thinking more highly of the movie than it perhaps deserves, and only by digging a little deeper in retrospect can we deflate our opinion to the proper size. Such was my experience with Memory, an always good, sometimes very good film filled top-to-bottom with excellent acting. It takes on a number of thorny issues with the emotional intelligence not to sand them down, but thematically, the movie seems content to look at them rather than into them. And yet, it makes for captivating in-the-moment viewing, even if it’s less likely to stay with you than you might’ve expected.

Written and directed by Michel Franco, Memory primarily follows Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), introduced to us at an AA meeting celebrating 13 years of sobriety, with her 13-year-old daughter Anna (Brooke Timber) in attendance. The more we see of her life, the more signs we notice of some lingering trauma: Copious locks on her New York apartment, for instance, or her hesitance to let in a male repair tech when she’d requested a woman. Her sister Olivia (Merritt Wever), eager to get her to socialize, drags her to a reunion event at their old school. When a man there wordlessly approaches, she leaves — and he follows her all the way home. We perceive the scene from Sylvia’s perspective and assume ill intent. But when he’s still there in the morning, having spent a cold, rainy night out on the street, she decides to check on him.

His name is Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), and as it turns out, he has dementia. His memory can be fickle, better at holding onto the distant past, but capable of remembering something new for anywhere from a few seconds to a few months. So, why did Saul follow Sylvia home? She believes she knows. Days later, she decides to confront him about it. Does he remember participating in one of many rapes of her at age 12 by his high school friend, or has he conveniently forgotten? Saul doesn’t remember, but not because of his dementia: Olivia informs Sylvia soon after that his family moved to their neighborhood the year that she transferred schools, so he couldn’t have been one of her abuser’s faceless friends. Saul’s brother Isaac (Josh Charles) and niece (Elsie Fisher), not knowing this has transpired but seeing how taken he is with her, ask Sylvia, a social worker, to be his minder some afternoons. Though she goes at first to apologize to him, she ends up accepting the gig, and the two start spending a lot of time together.

I recount this early section of Memory’s plot not just to set up the complicated foundations of these lead performances, but to illustrate Franco’s handling of our emotional journey. This movie often lets us live through a scene with one understanding, only to then blow up its original context and force us to re-assess. It’s a thematically appropriate game, to a certain extent. We are being forced to grapple with our own memories of what just occurred when transformational information arises. But not all instances of this misdirection feel deeper than being played with. If films teach us how to watch them, we learn early to suspect Memory, and if the goal was to bring us back to trust by the end, I didn’t get there. The doubt that enhanced the moments recounted above, by bringing us closer to Sylvia’s experience of them, kept me distanced from what I believe we’re meant to embrace later on.

In a lesser movie, this would have meant disengagement from the drama, but Memory never lost my attention because of how much there was to see in the performances. The visual style is observant, preferring stillness and distance to capture the actors’ full physicality, through which their characters are made wonderfully manifest. The script hardly needs to contort itself into revealing scenarios; we learn all we need to know about who Sylvia is now by watching Chastain exist and interact. She, Wever as her sister, and Jessica Harper as their mother Samantha (who Sylvia has cut off completely) all have a certain openness, wearing their thoughts and feelings on their skin. Saul is different, exuding an easygoing warmth that is sometimes covering up a lack of understanding. He is not someone to assert his presence, so when the frustration and hurt of his situation is made bare, it feels like Sarsgaard is sharing a secret with us.

A lot happens, story-wise, but if the film had just followed Sylvia and Saul learning how to be around each other, it would’ve been enough. Thinking back, I don’t find myself dwelling on the movie’s ideas, but on some of the actors’ choices. Chastain’s arching of her shoulders like a deflector shield; Sarsgaard’s intonation of certain lines, both humorous and heartbreaking; Harper’s face barely holding back a nuclear meltdown within; Wever’s sheepish, childlike sway in two key scenes. Timber, in her feature debut, is asked to be a more stable presence, and she conveys a depth of awareness while being more physically quiet. Everyone is doing great work in Memory, and for me, the experience of being swept up in that is always worth the price of admission.

Memory premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and does not currently have a set US release date. The film is 100 minutes long and is not yet rated.