Mem­o­ry – first-look review

The dual­i­ty of mem­o­ry is a con­cept that human beings have been forced to grap­ple with ever since our brains first func­tioned with even the slight­est indi­ca­tion of cohe­sion. Our mem­o­ries serve as a bank in which we accu­mu­late the unique life expe­ri­ences that craft us into dis­tinc­tive indi­vid­u­als, for bet­ter or for worse. On his third vis­it to the Venice Film Fes­ti­val with­in the past four years, direc­tor Michel Fran­co attempts to explore the lat­ter, more vul­ner­a­ble aspects of the cere­bral cache root­ed deep with­in our skulls.

We first encounter Sylvia (Jes­si­ca Chas­tain), an alco­holic in recov­ery, at an uncon­ven­tion­al­ly cel­e­bra­tive Alco­holics Anony­mous meet­ing on the thir­teenth anniver­sary of her sobri­ety. On an aver­age day, Sylvia’s mun­dane life con­sists of drop­ping her teen daugh­ter Anna (Brooke Tim­ber) at school, work­ing as a car­er at an adult day­care cen­tre and hang­ing out with her younger sis­ter Olivia (Mer­ritt Wev­er) and her fam­i­ly. When the sis­ters attend a high school reunion, Sylvia is fol­lowed home by Saul (Peter Saars­gard). Although the two don’t speak, he remains out­side of her apart­ment until the next morn­ing, sleep­ing on a pile of tires.

After find­ing emer­gency con­tact infor­ma­tion in his wal­let, Sylvia dis­cov­ers from his broth­er Isaac (Josh Charles) and niece Sara (Elsie Fish­er), that Saul has ear­ly-onset demen­tia. Evi­dent­ly caught up in copi­ous amounts of trau­ma from the past, Sylvia ini­tial­ly rejects a pro­pos­al made by Sara in which she would be paid to care for and pro­vide com­pa­ny for Saul, but after dis­cov­er­ing Saul wasn’t part of her trau­mat­ic high school expe­ri­ence, she has a change of heart, and the pair begin to ten­ta­tive­ly bond.

The beau­ty of Mem­o­ry derives from the sub­text embed­ded in its sto­ry. Sylvia and Saul are dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent, yet simul­ta­ne­ous­ly alike. Where Sylvia is inca­pac­i­tat­ed by the mem­o­ries which haunt her, Saul is free from the bur­den and is alle­vi­at­ed from remem­ber­ing the dis­tress­ing sit­u­a­tions that he is unwill­ing­ly prone to. Nev­er­the­less, they are both lone­ly and deprived of the lux­u­ry of hap­py mem­o­ries. As a result, when their respec­tive fam­i­ly lives begin to suf­fer, they find them­selves lean­ing on each other.

Alas, the major­i­ty of this intrigu­ing explo­ration is kept well beneath the film’s epi­der­mis and is hard­ly vis­i­ble to the naked eye. Con­sid­er­ing that this par­tic­u­lar plot heav­i­ly depends on the expe­ri­ences that have led these core char­ac­ters to con­verge, Fran­co is unable to com­mit to explor­ing these indi­vid­u­als on a gen­uine lev­el. Con­se­quent­ly, this ques­tion­able sac­ri­fice gives Chas­tain and Saars­gard lit­tle sub­stance to tack­le in what has the poten­tial to be a fas­ci­nat­ing set of char­ac­ter studies.

In lieu of nar­ra­tive depth, we are pro­vid­ed with stag­nant tech­ni­cal deci­sions that are equal­ly as under­de­vel­oped. By no means should films have to tire­less­ly take visu­al risks, but at the bare min­i­mum, this stripped-back approach should feel engag­ing and delib­er­ate. Yet Memory’s rel­a­tive­ly restrained hun­dred-minute run­time is bloat­ed with repet­i­tive sequences focused on the char­ac­ters nav­i­gat­ing the world phys­i­cal­ly rather than emo­tion­al­ly, sug­gest­ing that even Fran­co fails to grasp the vast poten­tial of the para­ble at hand.