Memory film review from Michelle Franco With Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber,Merritt Wever,Elsie Fisher,Jessica Harper AND Josh Charles
Michelle Franco presented in competition at the 80th Venice Film Festival. Memory with the main characters Jessica Chastain and magnetic Peter Sarsgaardwinner of the Volpi Cup for best male performance.
Already winner of the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize with his New order In 2020, the Mexican director brings to the big screen the dramatic story of two characters he himself defined as “unable to live except within the cracks of society.”
Silvia (Jessica Chastain) is a former alcoholic with a traumatic past who works as a social worker at an adult treatment center and lives with her daughter Anna (Brooke Wood), a thirteen year old boy with a sweet and mature soul. While meeting her old school friends, she is approached by a man who does nothing but smile at her and who, when she leaves, follows her to her house. The next day, Sylvia finds him still there, sitting on the sidewalk, despite the pouring rain: she recognizes the man from his brother (Josh Charles), called Saul (Peter Sarsgaard)) and suffers from dementia. Saul he can’t remember why he followed her, but he trusts her, and through the long walks and moments they spend together, they realize that they are alike and that they have a new feeling for each other.
A painful and sincere story from the lives of two outsiders of society.
The romantic slant of the story is immediately apparent in the film. FrankHowever, the tenderness and tenderness with which the Mexican director depicts the blossoming love between a man whose past constantly eludes him in the depths of his mind and a woman who cannot escape her past is surprising. Their story is a wonderful testimony of how, even in the darkest corners, in conditions that society considers disgusting, love can shed light and add color to lives that are otherwise doomed to dullness and loneliness.
Using a static, impersonal focus that observes its characters from afar while maintaining a respectful distance from their dramas, Michelle Franco however, he manages to convey with poignant clarity the daily struggles of someone living with dementia, thanks in part to his excellent interpretation Sarsgaard – and about a woman who has become a victim of violence, behind whom stands a dysfunctional family.
Jessica Chastain She is increasingly in demand on the international acting scene and this role seems perfect for her, although Sol’s character steals the show.
If in his previous films Franco achieved climax through plot twists, rough and violent scenes, then in Memory the violence is hidden, narrated only in voices choked with tears, but no less bloody.
Intense and emotionally tearing, Memory keeps you glued to the screen until the last touching moment.
