How does a filmmaker bring out something new in the prolific Jessica Chastain? From the first scene onward, Michel Franco photographs her character Sylvia almost exclusively in profile, or slightly from behind in his widescreen compositions. It is as if we are sharing her sideways approach to life, following her thoughts. Seldom seen in close-up, the versatile actress is entrusted to hold the center from a distance. The effect is devastating in the film's most emotional scene, with Sylvia's weeping uncontrollably in the middle distance, her members just standing around, aloof, unsupportive, her monster of a mother almost blocking Sylvia from view. That short scene encapsulates her entire life, how she becomes who she is. The film's last scene is similarly perfect; short and sweet, it points to her future.
I think Chastain handpicked the emerging auteur Franco to work with (they have another film coming out). I am impressed with his classical restraint. His formal, visual signatures never overwhelm the story. The camera is mostly static, but the scenes are short, avoiding the usual art-house oppressiveness. When Saul (Peter Skarsgaard) is in the frame, or in Sylvia's mind, the camera moves, the earth moves, she has a spring in her step, her voice grows softer.
_Memory_ asks pointed questions about the mysteries of the human condition. We are defined by what we remember, misremember, cannot recall, choose to forget. Straight-jacketed by childhood trauma and past addiction, Sylvia is a supremely reserved, overprotective single mother. All her friends seem to hail from Alcoholic Anonymous. Saul has the lack of inhibition of the mentally ill (early onset dementia). One night he tries to follow her home, but she barricades it with quadruple locks. Slowly she lets down her guard, shares with him complementary vulnerability. Their late blooming romance, aided by Sylvia's precocious teenage daughter Anna (Brooke Timber), reminds me of another great humanist director Lee Chang-Dong's taboo-breaking relationship in _Oasis_.
This is my first Franco film, so I naturally regard Chastain as much the auteur of this film as the director. _Memory_ comes on the heel of _The Good Nurse_ in which she plays another financially strapped single mother. Yet her spontaneous, open-hearted nurse in the previous work cannot be more different from the tightly wound Sylvia. Even the voices are like night and day, sonorous in one role, curt in the other. Chastain looks shockingly young in _Memory_, especially since the last time I saw her was as the dying Tammy Wynette. Lithe and as tiny as Anna, she can easily pass as a teenager, especially in the presence of Skarsgaard, an embarrassed crouching bear of a man. In fact the actress may have conceived of her character as someone arrested in her teenage state, with sullenness and exhaustion baked into her soul, her gait. She can barely manage a smile, unless it is for her daughter, and later Saul. It is a tricky, non-showy role, and Chastain inhibits the passive character to the fullness of her being.
Yet for someone with such a checkered past, Sylvia is devoid of meanness, full of hidden sensitivity. When she offends Anna or Saul -- which is often, given her abrupt manners -- she tries to make amends. When something triggers her festering wounds she would curl up and cry for hours -- but always out of the public's eye. (The alcoholism subtext seems to draw from Chastain's heartfelt experience with her own sister, but I hate to intrude on her privacy here.) When they finally start dating it is like first love; Sylvia opens up like a flower. Timber, Skarsgaard, and the supporting actors are good, but _Memory_ is the latest great Jessica Chastain character study first and foremost.
The low-key _Memory_ especially stands out when it is compared with more highly touted but inferior movies I have watched (or rewatched) recently. I applaud the refusal to wallow in the alcoholism trap (unlike _To Leslie_), to turn the protagonist into a cypher (Petzold's _Barbara_, and Wenders's _Perfect Days_ which has similar family dynamics but less thematic depth), or to treat the memory motif as a video game (Bonello's _The Beast_). Most modern "art-house" films take out too much. Withholding the defining moments of the protagonists' lives is such a tired gimmick and diminishes their humanity. Being human is such a fragile thing; Chastain, Skarsgaard, and Franco have explored that oblique mystery so very profoundly.
0 out of 0 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink