Memory

Memory invites debate, rather than imposing a specific interpretation. It’s also a film that lingers, shifting and expanding in significance, even as the details start to blur.

Chastain and Sarsgaard give a pair of haunting, expert performances as damaged people making sense of their own agony together. Franco gets out of the way of his actors without manipulating them.

In a film that could have bowed to easy clichés, Chastain and Sarsgaard are a class act — their touching, tactile chemistry is the film’s triumph.

The direct, intimate way in which the movie is filmed and acted, however, makes it an affecting study of two people’s attempts to forge some kind of relationship despite huge psychic damage on both sides.

Told through a humanist lens, it never resorts to simple sentimentality.

The film reveals itself as a prototypical yet surprisingly tender love story between two damaged people re-learning how to move through a world that’s unable to adequately support them.

Chastain reliably holds the screen even if her performance often feels overly studied rather than lived in, never more so than in her scenes with Sarsgaard, whose delicate, quicksilver expressiveness appreciably deepens both the movie and its stakes. You don’t always believe in Sylvia and Saul as a couple, but Sarsgaard makes you want to.

“Memory”, a beautiful and interesting film, talks to us about those who don't remember and those who want to forget. An (im)possible, dramatic and heartbreaking love story, based on the fragility of memories and the uncertainty about the reasons of the two protagonists - excellently played by Chastain and Sarsgaard. A complex relationship is established between the two: their differences are an initial obstacle to mutual empathy, but over time it is precisely the possibility of seeing in each other people disconnected from their past that brings them closer in an unexpected way. He can't remember, she would just like to forget: two different perspectives on the theme of memory that become central in Michel Franco's drama. «I wanted to make a film about people who get lost in society. Their inability, or unwillingness, to conform to expectations is often rooted in facts that exist only in their memories. Sometimes it is marginalization itself that offers an escape from the shadows of the past, a chance to build a life in the present». These are the director's words, but also the right summary to express the meaning of this introspective and exciting film. The solid and thoughtful screenplay, rich in psychological nuances, gradually reveals memories, traumas, awareness and acceptances. And the visual elegance of the work is combined with a balanced emotionality (physical or verbal violence is always portrayed from a certain distance, with a certain alienating coldness in the way it is shot but not in its intensity). Less dark, even sweet in its romantic tragedy, this work is the story of two lives incapable or reluctant to conform to expectations and lost in the meshes of society. An approach that opens up new perspectives for the director's future, one of the most interesting authorial perspectives of recent years. Volpi Cup for best male performance to Peter Sarsgaard at the 80th Venice Film Festival (but Chastain was also very deserving).

Michel Franco's MEMORY is a coolly and straightforwardly told love story of two people marked by fate. While Sylvia is haunted by her past and cannot forget, Saul's burden lies precisely at this point—he is increasingly suffering from dementia and can no longer remember. That these two characters find each other through such a circuitous route is unusual for a love story, but it is portrayed very convincingly by the two lead actors, Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard. A film that doesn't need any special moments of suspense to captivate the viewer nonetheless.

Memory is a heartbreaking movie. Every memory loss movie makes me sad. Forgetting your precious memories is more painful than physical pain. On the other hand, some memories you cannot but want to forget hunt you forever. The allegory in the movie is unbearable.

Jessica Chastain plays a glum social worker haunted by her past. She connects with a man with dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) after he follows her home from their high school reunion. Their encounter dredges up family issues as it develops into a relationship. Writer/director Michel Franco seems to fascinated by these subjects (his film Chronic covers similar territory my review) and he's created an interesting story, even with its flaws. Of course, the actors all turn in beautifully nuanced performances, but his pacing and use of wide shots keep the drama from having as much emotional impact. Despite all the discomfort that these 2 damaged characters face, the duo are the best reason to watch this film dealing with difficult subjects in a low-key manner.

(Mauro Lanari) Festival film, arthouse melodrama. Renowed filmmakers have their own ways of being manipulative: a blanket of silence, a frozen and chilling gaze, a brainy and implausible plot (in this case each character has a different memory issue that appears and disappears according to the needs of the script), the reconciling moments proposed not as momentary oases but as definitive solutions even when the origin of the problems is not subjective (i.e. in the psyche) but objective (in the history that devastated us). Acting prowess cannot counteract such directorial flaws.