Current:Home > reviewsTwo strangers grapple with hazy 'Memory' in this unsettling film -Capitatum
Two strangers grapple with hazy 'Memory' in this unsettling film
View
Date:2025-04-24 21:13:18
The Mexican writer-director Michel Franco is something of a feel-bad filmmaker. His style can be chilly and severe. His characters are often comfortable bourgeois types who are in for some class-based comeuppance. His usual method is to set up the camera at a distance from his characters and watch them squirm in tense, unbroken long takes.
Sometimes all hell breaks loose, as in Franco's dystopian drama New Order, about a mass revolt in Mexico City. Sometimes the nightmare takes hold more quietly, like in Sundown, his recent slow-burn thriller about a vacation gone wrong.
I haven't always been a fan of Franco's work, not because I object to pessimistic worldviews in art, but because his shock tactics have sometimes felt cheap and derivative, borrowed from other filmmakers. But his new English-language movie, Memory, is something of a surprise. For starters, it's fascinating to see how well-known American actors like Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard adapt to his more detached style of filmmaking. And while his touch is as clinical and somber as ever, there's a sense of tenderness and even optimism here that feels new to his work.
Chastain plays Sylvia, a single mom who works at an adult daycare center. From the moment we meet her, at an AA meeting where people congratulate her on her many years of sobriety, it's clear that she's been through a lot. She's intensely protective of her teenage daughter, rarely letting her hang out with other kids, especially boys. Whenever she returns home to her Brooklyn apartment, she immediately locks the door behind her and sets the home security system. Even when Sylvia's doing nothing, we see the tension in her body, as if she were steeling herself against the next blow.
One night, while attending her high school reunion, Sylvia is approached by a man named Saul, played by Sarsgaard. He says nothing, but his silent attentiveness unnerves Sylvia, especially when he follows her home and spends the night camped outside her apartment. The next morning, Sylvia learns more about Saul that might help explain his disturbing behavior: He has early-onset dementia and suffers regular short-term memory loss.
Some of the backstory in Memory is confusing by design. Sylvia remembers being sexually abused by a 17-year-old student named Ben when she was 12, and she initially accuses Saul of having abused her too. We soon learn that he couldn't have, because they were at school at different times. It would seem that Sylvia's own memory, clouded by personal pain, isn't entirely reliable either.
Despite the awkwardness and tension of these early encounters, Sylvia and Saul are clearly drawn to each other. Seeing how well Saul responds to Sylvia's company, his family offers her a part-time job looking after him during the day. As their connection deepens, they realize how much they have in common. Both Sylvia and Saul feel like outcasts. Both, too, have issues with their families; Saul's brother, played by Josh Charles, treats him like a nuisance and a child. And while Sylvia is close to her younger sister, nicely played by Merritt Wever, she's been estranged for years from their mother, who refuses to believe her allegations of sexual abuse.
The movie poignantly suggests that Sylvia and Saul are two very different people who, by chance, have come into each other's lives at just the right moment. At the same time, the story does come uncomfortably close to romanticizing dementia, as if Saul's air of friendly, unthreatening bafflement somehow made him the perfect boyfriend.
But while I have some reservations about how the movie addresses trauma and illness, this is one case where Franco's restraint actually works: There's something admirably evenhanded about how he observes these characters trying to navigate uncharted waters in real time. Chastain and Sarsgaard are very moving here; it's touching to see how the battle-hardened Sylvia responds to Saul's gentle spirit, and how he warms to her patience and attention.
This isn't the first time Franco has focused on the act of caregiving; more than once I was reminded of his 2015 drama, Chronic, which starred Tim Roth as a palliative care worker. I didn't love that movie, either, but it had some of the same unsettling intimacy and emotional force as Memory. It's enough to make me want to revisit some of Franco's work, with newly appreciative eyes.
veryGood! (2)
Related
- Gen. Mark Milley's security detail and security clearance revoked, Pentagon says
- LeBron James indicates at NBA All-Star Game intention to remain with Los Angeles Lakers
- Lenny Kravitz Details His Inspirational Journey While Accepting Music Icon Award at 2024 PCAs
- A Florida woman is missing in Spain after bizarre occurrences. Her loved ones want answers
- Average rate on 30
- Minnesota police seek motive as town grieves after 2 officers, 1 firefighter fatally shot
- Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling Reunite at the 2024 BAFTA Film Awards
- Expand March Madness? No thanks. What a bad idea from Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark
- The White House is cracking down on overdraft fees
- Prince William Attends 2024 BAFTA Film Awards Solo Amid Kate Middleton's Recovery
Ranking
- Federal hiring is about to get the Trump treatment
- Waffle House shooting in Indianapolis leaves 1 dead, 5 injured, police say
- Funerals held in Georgia for 2 U.S. soldiers killed in Jordan drone attack
- After three decades spent On the Road, beloved photographer Bob Caccamise retires
- Backstage at New York's Jingle Ball with Jimmy Fallon, 'Queer Eye' and Meghan Trainor
- Megan Fox Channels Jennifer's Body in Goth-Glam Look at People's Choice Awards 2024
- ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ stirs up $27.7M weekend, ‘Madame Web’ flops
- Adam Sandler jokingly confuses People's Choice Awards honor for 'Sexiest Man Alive' title
Recommendation
Travis Hunter, the 2
You Know You Love Every Time Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds Trolled Each Other
See Ryan Seacrest and 26-Year-Old Girlfriend Aubrey Paige's Road to Romance
Simu Liu Reveals the Secret to the People’s Choice Awards—and Yes, It’s Ozempic
At site of suspected mass killings, Syrians recall horrors, hope for answers
Swifties, Melbourne police officers swap friendship bracelets at Taylor Swift's Eras Tour
'Bob Marley: One Love' overperforms at No. 1, while 'Madame Web' bombs at box office
2 officers, 1 first responder shot and killed at the scene of a domestic call in Minnesota