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At his most harshly confrontational, Michel Franco just about splits audiences down the middle. His best-known work New Order, which describes a violent revolt of the poor against Mexico’s super-wealthy, won the Silver Lion Jury Prize in Venice in 2020. Memory, his new film, is also likely to put its viewers on opposite banks of the river, but for different reasons.
There will be the casual viewers of well-acted romantic drama and dyed-in-the-wool Jessica Chastain groupies (think of its upcoming bow at TIFF) who will swallow this tepid plate of familiar entertainment, particularly from the comfort of their living room sofa (this is where the characters in the film distractedly watch their movies). Then there will be the unhappy festival-goers who were expecting something edgy, maybe in the outlandish ballpark of Sundown (2021), in which Tim Roth drops out of middle-class English life to loaf and drink in Acapulco.
Considering who the writer-director is, Memory is remarkable chiefly for its steadfast conventionality, unrelieved by any type of irony or plot twist. Welcome to the sofa. Sylvia (Chastain) is a social assistant who lives with, and ridiculously overprotects, her 13-year-old daughter Anna (played by Brooke Timber with an inner maturity that makes her the easiest character to relate to in the film).
Situated on a deserted block in outer Brooklyn, their remote apartment next to a garage selling tires accentuates the perception of danger that follows Sylvia wherever she goes, from her AA meetings (she’s been sober for 13 years) to a high school reunion. A strange man with a beard silently comes up to her at the bash (Peter Sarsgaard) and, when she dashes home – alone, at night, on foot and by subway – he follows her home and sleeps outside in the rain.
Sylvia’s contacts in the world of social work with the homeless and mentally impaired come in handy here. Uncertain whether to give her paranoia at being followed free rein, or to handle the situation with professional aplomb, she chooses the latter. This is how she learns her stalker is Saul Shapiro and has dementia – and needs someone like her to watch over him while his brother and caregiver Isaac is at work and play.
The Shapiro brothers live on a leafy street in a three-story red brick brownstone and are well able to pay Sylvia for her services. But she is after something else, some kind of confrontation with her long-buried past and retribution from those who have hurt her. It’s an ugly story from her childhood and the reason she is estranged from her mother. At first Saul appears to be implicated, and Sylvia won’t take “I don’t remember” for an answer. Before the viewer can decide why a social assistant would expect a dementia patient to remember anything, Sylvia has flown into revenge mode.
Later all is cleared up, paving the way for a closer relationship between Sylvia and Saul that goes beyond work, all the way to intimacy. Both their families are outraged, apart from the wise daughter who gets it. The romance proceeds without further ado to the oft-repeated strains of the song, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”.
An actors’ film made up of sideways looks and pregnant pauses, Memory sometimes feels more like a stage play. Both Sarsgaard and Chastain are subtle performers and fairly nimble with the English dialogue that tends to be awkwardly staccato and fragmentary when not downright banal. This is the kind of unresolved screenplay that raises irritating questions like “But why did…?”, “But why…?” “But…” The answers are not in the story, and at this level of filmmaking they don’t really make a difference.
Director, screenplay: Michel Franco
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber, Merritt Wever, Elsie Fisher, Jessica Harper, Josh Charles
Producers: Erendira Nunez Larios, Michel Franco, Alex Orlovsky, Duncan Montgomery
Cinematography: Yves Cape
Editing: Oscar Figueroa Jara, Michel Franco
Production design: Claudio Ramirez Castelli
Costume design: Gabriela Fernandez
Sound: Javier Umpierrez
Production companies: Teorema (Mexico), High Frequency Entertainment (U.S.A.), Screen Capital, Mubi, Case Study Films
World Sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
In English
100 minutes
