Memory ★★★

Director Michel Franco‘s Memory is a heavy film. It tackles complex themes and situations, handling them with a deftness and understanding that makes it a poignant experience. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is a social worker who, at the start of the film, is celebrating 13 years sober. Her daughter Anna (Brooke Timber) is the reason she became sober and the pair live together in an apartment next to a tire shop. Their home is secured with multiple door locks and a heavy duty alarm system, two hints at the fear and trauma Sylvia carries with her. One evening, she decides to accompany her younger sister Olivia (Merritt Wever) to her high school reunion, only to abruptly leave when a strange man sits next to her and stares at her. It is not long before she realizes that this man, Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), is following her home, where he spends the entire night standing outside her door in the cold and rain. This sparks an unexpected connection between two lonely souls.

Saul, as Sylvia will soon learn, has early onset dementia. Though they both went to the same high school, they did not know one another. Why he followed her is a mystery, but what is clear in time is that they have a connection. Sylvia is asked by Saul’s niece Sara (Elsie Fisher) to become his caretaker a couple days a week to alleviate the full-time responsibility from her father and Saul’s brother, Isaac (Josh Charles). Though hesitant at first, she soon accepts. Through these days spent together, Memory finds two characters casting aside their shared problem with memory to find a connection. Sylvia is able to put her guard down, let herself trust another person, and not let her past trauma rule her present. Saul, though he struggles with short-term memory, finds comfort in these days together, showing flashes of the charismatic and kind man he was before his world became dictated by his illness. Chastain and Sarsgaard have terrific chemistry together, flowing nicely with the natural feel that Franco aspires to achieve. This is a film that is paced to the beat of the characters with all other narrative concerns on the backburner. These people are at the center of the film, which follows their growing connection and the romantic urges underpinning it that they are initially hesitant to explore.

Memory’s more challenging scenes come in the film’s second half, especially with the return of Sylvia’s estranged mother Samantha (Jessica Harper). Here, themes of sexual abuse, parenting, and emotional abandonment take hold and start to illuminate the why behind many of Sylvia’s present emotional trauma. Throughout the film, she is on a turbulent emotional ride and, when triggered with past memories, can be sent to her bed, curled up in a mess of tears. Chastain captures this ebb-and-flow so gracefully, expressing it with considerable empathy. Her confrontation with her mother is a passionate and frustrating encounter with Chastain capturing the pent-up agony and pain in Sylvia that comes back to the surface. While the scenes that evoke this past trauma can be the most explosive, the film often excels in the quiet moments, whether watching Sylvia just lay in bed as Anna comes to comfort her – finally understanding more about her mom’s troubled past – and Saul brings a drink and some food or sitting back, watching the trio enjoy a meal on Sylvia’s deck. 

Sylvia and Saul’s romance brings up further difficult themes with no easy answer as Isaac grows frustrated with their romance and sees Saul as a man incapable of making his own decisions, which Sylvia is exploiting. Meanwhile, Saul sees Isaac as too controlling, while still in full possession of the knowledge that he is an adult man capable of making his own decisions even if he cannot remember those decisions all the time. This tricky thematic balance drives much of the growing drama on Saul’s side of the film with Sarsgaard’s growing pain at Isaac’s restrictions and his quiet calm with Sylvia speaking well of where Saul’s heart lies. His own struggles with his illness mixed with continued grief from his wife’s death have rendered Saul into a very isolated and solemn figure. But, with Sylvia, it brings out the old Saul that lets him live anew. These are two lonely, often misunderstood and impossible to categorize people who, in one another, find a person that accepts who they are in full.

Memory is a moving character drama that presents two troubled people and their unique hardships with absolute empathy and care. At all times, it feels real. Franco establishes a lived-in authenticity, bringing the city around these characters to life and capturing the messiness of daily existence there within. There are no easy definitions, while characters do not always say what they want or even anything at all, often allowing the silence to communicate for them. There is plenty of laughter and joy in the film, camaraderie found in unexpected places. There are plenty of tears to be shed as well, as the tragic backstories and challenging presents offer two broken characters in need of another person to understand that pain. With two great lead performances from Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, Franco is able to deliver a stirring experience.