Memory: Memorable Performances Distinguish Michel Franco's Poignant Drama

By Liz Braun

Rated: B+

The connection between memory and identity is explored in a tough new drama from filmmaker Michel Franco.

Memory stars Jessica Chastain as Sylvia and Peter Sarsgaard as Saul, lost souls who manage to find each other. Sylvia is someone who can’t forget her past because of trauma, and Saul is someone who is rapidly forgetting his past because of some form of dementia.

They do not meet cute.

Sylvia is first spotted at an AA meeting where she is celebrating 13 years of sober living. For company, she has brought along her teen daughter Anna (Brooke Timber), whose age coincides with mom’s sobriety.

Sylvia is someone who appears to live in a constant fight-or-flight state — she is overprotective of her daughter, and they live behind a handful of locks on their apartment door. Sylvia is wary of anyone encroaching on her physical space.

So, it’s not surprising that she abruptly gets up and leaves a high school reunion when a man wanders over to her table and sits down. Sylvia leaves the reunion and goes home.

The man follows her. And he sleeps beneath her window, despite bad weather.

There’s something a little off about this guy, which Sylvia recognizes. She contacts his family to come and take him home. The man who has followed Sylvia home proves to be Saul, and he did indeed attend the same high school she did — hence his presence at the reunion.

Saul has early onset dementia.

At first, Sylvia is convinced Saul was one of the boys who began sexually abusing her back in school, when she was little more than an adolescent. A conversation about that abuse is a first glimpse at a past that continues to haunt Sylvia.

Her memory is faulty, as it turns out. Saul was not one of the group of boys involved. Although they begin in conflict, Sylvia and Saul continue to fumble along getting to know each other, and eventually, Sylvia becomes one of Saul’s caretakers.

The relationship that slowly develops between Sylvia and Saul is the focus of Memory, and while hopeful, it is also fraught with issues past and present — all of it presented with the filmmaker’s characteristic unvarnished approach. This is cinema without emotional mollycoddling.

Saul’s family is intrusive, questioning Sylvia’s motives as she and Saul become closer.

And along the way, Sylvia has worse trauma to revisit when she and her estranged mother (Jessica Harper) get together; the camera never looks away, and as Memory delves into years of secrets and lies, it is sometimes not easy to watch.

What is easy to watch are the superb performances from Chastain and Sarsgaard, both of whom are emotionally naked here. Their job is to convince you that despite the past, an odd and unexpected relationship may well flourish in future.

Memory played first in Canada at TIFF in 2023. The cast includes Merritt Wever and Josh Charles.

Memory. Written and directed by Michel Franco. Starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard. In theatres in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal January 19.