Written and directed by Michel Franco, Memory stars Jessica Chastain as Sylvia, a social worker, mother, and recovering addict who encounters Saul (Peter Sarsgaard) randomly and disturbingly when he follows her home from a school reunion. Sylvia’s own traumas over sexual abuse at a young age pushes Saul away under a false assumption, but they eventually connect, with Sylvia helping Saul deal with his early onset dementia, and Saul helping Sylvia find emotional fortitude against her gaslighting mother (Jessica Harper).
Jessica Chastain’s career has been defined by her deliberate choice to portray women who are aware of their self-worth; powerful in their convictions, uncompromising, flawed, and intelligent while balancing warmth with severity. She does all of this without ever feeling like two of her characters are identical or she herself is typecast. Chastain, especially Memory, shows how in control she is of her own career, what she explores as an actress, and the image she projects on screen and stage. The main concern is not with her as an actress, able to take virtually any role and elevate it merely by her existence in the frame, but with the actual quality or effect of the film she is choosing to be a part of.
Ignoring her mainstream affairs (The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Dark Phoenix, It: Chapter Two, and The 355), Chastain has consistently had good performances in films that otherwise moved no needle and left no lasting impact, like The Zookeeper’s Wife, Molly’s Game, The Forgiven, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, The Good Nurse, and now Memory. This is all subjective of course, but one watches those films and hopes for a great story being told overall that changes something in one’s life, opening up a new perspective, or at the very least moves one to care deeply about what is happening on screen. None of this came to pass with Memory, a stately drama about living with trauma and disease (addiction, dementia) that is so stripped back it doesn’t have much of a function or form.
Memory has its moments, of course, and the cast involved are all giving excellent performances, Chastain primarily but equally affecting work from Peter Sarsgaard and Merritt Wever (playing Chastain’s sister Olivia). There are some aspects of the film’s construction by writer and director Michel Franco that are commendable and effective towards the central themes of trauma and recovery.
Conversations are led by improvisational dialogue, emotional scenes are shown from afar in wide master angles, and performances lead this piece above all else, an overall effect resembling effective theatre.
What becomes disappointing is that this staging akin to a theatrical production lacks the power needed to explore this difficult story. Beyond a couple of arresting scenes featuring Chastain and Sarsgaard, the entire film doesn’t match its intentions; the makeup of scenes feeling less like an emotional experience and more like a haphazard collection of concepts. Not enough is said to allow us inside what is happening with the characters, and when the deeper secrets are revealed it’s an unwieldy splat, lacking all manner of subtlety. What’s worse is that one could move on from the still and lifeless cinematography, with its concrete colour grading and flat lenses, but one cannot ignore the empty and washed-out sound mixing. Sound is as vital to cinema as visuals, and when Memory delivers clunky and cheap sound mixing with stiff cinematography, it leaves one feeling simply unmoved.
Memory could very well just be “one of those films” with understandable acclaim from many other sources, but I can’t have the same experience. There is no finality here, no meaningful resolution, no sense of deeper resonance. Memory has notes and hints of depth; but the barebones plot and empty execution leaves it all feeling bare, cold, confounding, and only an exercise in the acting talents of Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard.
Director and writer: Michel Franco
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Merritt Wever, and Jessica Harper.
MEMORY is screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival on the 17th and 21st of August. Details HERE
