People used to meet cute in films but in Memory they meet creepy. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is a woman who can be looked at through two different lenses. She is a solo mother who works in a low-paying job and lives in a bad neighbourhood. Her sister Olivia (Merritt Wever), who is married with a suburban lifestyle, provides childcare for Sylvia’s daughter Anne (Brooke Timber) and slips her extra cash.
Sylvia, who had a troubled adolescence, is a committed member of AA and has been clean for 12 years, so in one area of her life she is wildly successful.
To help her sobriety she leads a very routine, focused life but she breaks that to attend a high school reunion with Olivia. She leaves early and is followed home by a man at the reunion.
He is Soul Shapiro (Peter Sarsgaard) and his actions rightly freak Sylvia out. However, it is quickly established that Soul has early onset dementia and is a benign presence. Despite her misgivings, Sylvia is quickly picking up cash on the side by keeping Soul company.
This is where things get murky. The setup implies that it is Soul who has the larger set of problems but he mostly seems to have movie dementia, where he can remember perfectly well when it is handy to the plot but gets lost in a fog of forgetfulness when a bit of drama is called for.
Sarsgaard does the best he can with very little but this is Chastain’s movie and no matter how implausible Sylvia’s actions are, she has us believing all the way.
By Christine Powley
