movie review of memory

Now that Nicolas Cage has had his stock upgraded as of late (thanks to his lovely performance in “Pig” and his self-aware turn in the recent “ The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent ”), and Bruce Willis has retired, I suspect that Liam Neeson is going to be the next actor who finds himself in the critical crosshairs for doing far too many forgettable movies. His latest, “Memory,” is already his second such film in 2022, and since his list of upcoming projects on IMDb mentions titles like “Retribution,” “In the Land of Saints and Sinners,” “The Revenger” and “Cold Pursuit Sequel Project,” it doesn’t appear that he will be disembarking this particular gravy train anytime soon. To his credit, “Memory” is at least slightly more ambitious than most of the similar films Neeson has done recently. But it’s certainly not enough to make you overlook how one of our most powerful actors is again wasting his time on the kind of half-baked thriller Charles Bronson used to crank out with depressing regularity during the waning days of his career.

The time around, Neeson plays Alex Lewis , another expert hired killer with a particular set of skills. As this film opens, he’s considering leaving the life behind after seeing signs of the Alzheimer’s that has already claimed his brother. Nevertheless, Alex accepts one final job in El Paso, in which he has to bump off two separate people and recover some important flash drives from the first victim. He pulls off the first hit easily enough but when he discovers that the second victim is a 12-year-old girl ( Mia Sanchez ), Alex refuses to pull the trigger and keeps the flash drives for himself as an insurance policy.

Unfortunately, the girl had been pimped out by her father to a number of wealthy and powerful people, including the depraved son of powerful real estate developer Davana Sealman ( Monica Bellucci ), who put out the original hit in order to help her child evade justice. After tying up that loose end, she also calls for Alex to be killed. But even though he’s slipping mentally, he’s still skillful enough to evade her hired goons and kill everyone remotely connected to the crime. Alex also plants enough clues for an FBI task force led by Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce ), who also tried to help the girl and feels guilty about what happened to her, to pursue him while always remaining one step ahead of them.

If the basic story points of “Memory” sound familiar to you, it may be that you’ve seen “ The Memory of a Killer ,” the 2003 Belgian crime drama that has been Americanized here (with both films based on Jef Geeraerts ’ novel The Alzheimer Case ). Although this version more or less follows the same narrative path of its predecessor, the original film, although a perfectly good genre film in its own right, was more interested in its central character (played in a very good performance by Jan Decleir ) as he is forced to reckon with both the weight of his past misdeeds and the cruelties of his present condition. 

“Memory” does begin to work when Neeson gets a hold of script’s more dramatically impactful moments, but these scenes are simply too few and far between to be truly effective. Dario Scardapane ’s screenplay tends to put more of an emphasis on the big action beats, which are implausible enough as is and doubly so when you consider that they involve a character with deteriorating cognitive abilities. Although these scenes are handled with some style by director Martin Campbell , whose oeuvre includes one of the very best James Bond films (“Casino Royale”) and a lot of stuff that will be politely overlooked here, they wind up overwhelming the human drama involving Neeson’s character. This is especially evident during a new, less thoughtful finale in which one of the key villains is dispatched in an especially gruesome manner in order to give the gorehounds in the audience a final thrill before the end credits. Other than Neeson, the only performance of note here comes from Bellucci, whose casting here is unexpected, to say the least.

“Memory” is a little better than the majority of Neeson’s recent action excursions and there’s a chance it may prove to be better than most of his future projects. However, that doesn’t prove to be enough to make it worth watching, and those lucky enough to have seen “The Memory of a Killer” are likely to be disappointed as well. Yes, a little more effort has gone into the making of “Memory,” so it’s a shame—and an ironic one to boot—that the end results are so forgettable.

Now playing in theaters.

Peter Sobczynski

A moderately insightful critic, full-on Swiftie and all-around  bon vivant , Peter Sobczynski, in addition to his work at this site, is also a contributor to The Spool and can be heard weekly discussing new Blu-Ray releases on the Movie Madness podcast on the Now Playing network.

• Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis
• Guy Pearce as Vincent Serra
• Taj Atwal as Linda Amistead
• Harold Torres as Hugo Marquez
• Monica Bellucci as Davana Sealman
• Ray Stevenson as Detective Danny Mora
• Stella Stocker as Maya
• Antonio Jaramillo as Papa Leon
• Dario Scardapane

Cinematographer

• David Tattersall

Writer (book)

• Jef Geeraerts
• Martin Campbell

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Liam neeson in ‘memory’: film review.

Guy Pearce co-stars as an FBI agent in a remake of a Belgian crime thriller involving a child trafficking ring and a hitman struggling with Alzheimer’s.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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The premise of Memory just might be the mother of all high concepts: A hired assassin has Alzheimer’s. It instantly evokes two possible interpretations: bruising black comedy would be one, thoughtful musing on life and death the other. In especially deft hands, a third option would meld the two. As directed by Martin Campbell from a screenplay by Dario Scardapane, and even with a couple of soulful actors at its center, that premise plays out as none of the above; it’s a mechanical plot point in a perfunctory actioner that leaves laughs — intentional ones, anyway — and existential meditations by the wayside.

Adapting the 2003 Belgian feature The Memory of a Killer , based on the novel De Zaak Alzheimer ( The Alzheimer Case ), Memory comes equipped with all the accoutrements of the contract-killer genre: the burner phones, the silencers, the laser sights, the Liam Neeson . This time, though, Neeson isn’t the law-and-order guy wielding questionable methods in the name of justice, but the mercenary who is faced with an unacceptable assignment — his target is a 13-year-old girl — and trying to do the right thing before his dimming cognitive lights go out permanently.

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Release date: Friday, April 29

Cast: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Ray Stevenson, Harold Torres

Director: Martin Campbell

Screenwriter: Dario Scardapane

To believe, as we’re meant to, that Neeson’s Alex Lewis spent his formative years in El Paso, Texas, where most of the action is set, would require its own cognitive disconnect. Then again, the production was shot mainly in Bulgaria, and there’s a vaguely intercontinental, pan-European vibe to the cast, from small supporting roles to Monica Bellucci ’s spiritless rendering of a villainous bigwig.

But the Lone Star State is meant to be more than a state of mind in Memory . It’s meant to put a topical slant on a storyline involving the abuse and trafficking of children. The teenager who Alex refuses to kill is an undocumented immigrant; a detention center for such children proves to be a vicious nexus of public and private interests; and the real-life unsolved murders of countless girls and women in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, haunts and drives a key character.

For all its questions of morality, mortality and politics, the film feels empty at its core, not unlike the sleek modern spaces where the story’s ultra-wealthy, ultra-corrupt and ultra-clichéd scheme and cavort joylessly. Matching the screenplay’s lack of nuance, Campbell ( Casino Royale , The Protégé ) orchestrates the proceedings with a flat efficacy, stringing together familiar action beats and churning up little that rings true.

As the movie opens, Alex pulls off a hit of gruesome expertise in a Guadalajara hospital, a scene that’s mirrored, with even more blood, in the film’s final stretch. However ruthless a killing machine Alex may be, his humanizing predicament becomes clear when, returning to his car after dispatching his victim, he struggles for a painful moment to remember where he put his car key. The pills he takes are designed to forestall the inevitable, and to help maintain an even keel he scrawls factoids on his inner forearm for easy reference. Neeson signals Alex’s frustration and his acknowledgment of defeat. He’s ready to quit this crazy business, a decision that his Mexico City contact Mauricio (Lee Boardman) rejects, hoisting a fat envelope of cash at him with instructions to kill two people in El Paso, a town Alex knows well.

After dispatching target No. 1, a well-to-do businessman (Scot Williams), and retrieving an item from his safe, Alex discovers that the second would-be victim is 13-year-old Beatriz (Mia Sanchez). With his customary violence, he lets his smarmy local handler (Daniel de Bourg) know that he wants the contract canceled, setting off a new round of cat-and-mouse in which he’s the quarry.

FBI agent Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce ), meanwhile, has taken a particular interest in Beatriz, who was being pimped by her father (Antonio Jaramillo) and is now orphaned, after a sting by Vincent’s team, the agency’s Child Exploitation Task Force, goes spectacularly wrong. Vincent’s boss, Gerald Nussbaum (Ray Fearon), puts the task force on ice and sends Mexican investigator Hugo Marquez (Harold Torres) packing. But Hugo finds a reason to stick around, and neither Vincent nor his partner, Linda Amisted (Taj Atwal), is eager to pivot to run-of-the-mill local crimes. An El Paso detective (Ray Stevenson) isn’t thrilled to have them around, and Alex, in his last-ditch pursuit of truth and justice, is one step ahead of them all. If only he can remember where he put that flash drive filled with incriminating audio.

Scardapane (producer-writer of the series The Bridge and The Punisher ) advances the story via information drops posing as conversation. Case in point: “You realize we’re talking about one of the most powerful real estate moguls in the country, right?” Bellucci’s Davana Sealman, the mogul in question, pulls many puppet strings in the city, a power that her hedonistic son (Josh Taylor) depends on. The pileup of one-note characters also includes a prostitute (Stella Stocker) working the bar at Alex’s hotel, and a trophy-wife stereotype (Natalie Anderson) who feels like something out of a subpar Raymond Chandler knockoff, or an unintended spoof of one.

The involvement of Pearce is a wink and a nod to his role in a classic of the memory-affliction subgenre, Memento , a taut and masterful thriller in whose shadow Memory withers. Pearce is one of the greatest actors of his generation, and his performance is the strongest, most sustained and convincing element of the film — and one that frequently finds him in a vacuum.

He enters the story delivering a performance within a performance: In the attempted sting, Vincent poses as a john seeking the company of an underage girl. Even after he’s shaken off the layers of scuzz required for that role, there’s something off about Vincent, a sense that he’s uncared for. The explanation arrives in an eleventh-hour revelation that should be crushing in its sadness but is instead awkward in its narrative ineptitude.

To give that disclosure its intended impact, Campbell would have had to stir up certain undercurrents in the characters who interact with Vincent. Atwal comes closest in a final exchange that, against the odds in a movie that can feel propelled by an algorithm, produces a satisfying emotional zing.

However unsubtle the material, Neeson offers unforced glimmers of a soul lost to brutality as Alex wavers between a thickening mental fog and perfect lucidity when the plot demands it. But there’s also a sense of his effortless screen magnetism being shoehorned into a thriller boilerplate. And it’s tempting to imagine, when Alex is staring into the middle distance, forgetting where he is and why, that Neeson might be remembering when he played complex men like Alfred Kinsey and Michael Collins.

Full credits

Distributors: Briarcliff Entertainment, Open Road Films Production companies: Black Bear Pictures, Welle Entertainment, Saville Productions Cast: Liam Neeson, Guy Pearce, Monica Bellucci, Taj Atwal, Ray Fearon, Ray Stevenson, Harold Torres, Josh Taylor, Antonio Jaramillo, Daniel De Bourg, Scot Williams, Stella Stocker, Rebecca Calder, Atanas Srebrev, Lee Boardman, Natalie Anderson, Mia Sanchez Director: Martin Campbell Screenwriter: Dario Scardapane Based on the book De Zaak Alzheimer by Jef Geeraerts and on the picture De Zaak Alzheimer by Carl Joos and Erik Van Looy Producers: Cathy Schulman, Moshe Diamant, Rupert Maconick, Michael Heimler, Arthur Sarkissian Executive producers: Teddy Schwarzman, Ben Stillman, Peter Bouckaert, Rudy Durand, Tom Ortenberg, James Masciello, Matthew Sidari Director of photography: David Tattersall Production designer: Wolf Kroeger Costume designer: Irina Kotcheva Editor: Jo Francis Music: Rupert Parkes Casting: Pam Dixon, Dan Hubbard

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Memory review: Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard rise above this film’s contrived misery

Writer-director michel franco unfurls a rolling series of revelations here – a buffet of traumas served up for the benefit of narrative intrigue, article bookmarked.

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Memory would be too contrived a work to buy into if it weren’t for the talents of Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard. Directed by Mexico’s Michel Franco – a light provocateur known for his cool-headed portraits of violent retribution against the wealthy – it’s a romantic drama of sorts, in which affection becomes secondary to suffering .

Chastain plays Sylvia, a care worker in a facility for disabled people. We first meet her at Alcoholics Anonymous , where she’s celebrating 13 years of sobriety by introducing to the group her teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber). Sylvia’s life is comfortable, if cyclical and stagnant, chopped into listless pieces by Franco and his co-editor, Oscar Figueroa. But the signs of trouble are there: she seems uneasy around her sister, Olivia (Merritt Wever), and compulsively attached to a routine of home alarms and door locks. She denies her daughter’s most basic requests for independence, and rifles through her bedroom drawers.

So, when she’s browbeaten into attending a school reunion, unease spills almost naturally into outright terror when a man, Saul (Sarsgaard), sidles up to her seat. She heads home. He follows her back, all the way to her front door, and stays there until morning, resting limply on a pile of spare tyres from the garage next door.

Here begins Franco’s rolling series of revelations, a buffet of traumas served up for the benefit of narrative intrigue. It turns out Saul’s motivations were entirely innocent – as his brother Isaac (Josh Charles) explains, he has early-onset dementia. It manifests largely, for now, in erratic incidents of confusion and disorientation.

However, there’s a reason Olivia was so jumpy with him, and an accusation is introduced and then dismissed, in order to make way for even further trauma. The camera holds back in order to watch her, from afar, as she sobs in the middle of a park or in the living room after she’s confronted by her estranged and controlling mother (Jessica Harper).

Memory is eventually able to surpass all that calculated misery. Chastain and Sarsgaard invest much in the fragile connection that Olivia and Saul eventually build, and find something much more poignant between them. Saul’s dementia has left him with little of his present but much of his past – of his childhood and his long-deceased wife. In a sense, he still lives there. Sarsgaard shifts sensitively between the energised way he talks about his lost love and the subsequent shutdown his mind experiences when he’s forced to confront the fact she’s gone.

Olivia, too, is stuck, albeit for very different reasons. Chastain allows the grief of a lost girlhood to twist her body inwards, to keep it taut and perpetually on the defence. When Olivia and Saul’s timid flirtations inevitably ease into physical passion, the actors move with such innocence and desperation that it’s hard not to be touched – here are two people whose minds struggle to see what’s before them, daring to hope that there’s still something to build upon. Together, both actors rise above the most blatant of Memory ’s manipulations.

Dir: Michel Franco. Starring: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Merritt Wever, Brooke Timber, Elsie Fisher, Josh Charles, Jessica Harper. Cert 15, 99 minutes

‘ Memory ’ is in cinemas from 23 February

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Review: In ‘Memory,’ two survivors come to a wary bond, even if the past harbors demons

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A guarded Jessica Chastain and a rumpled Peter Sarsgaard make mysterious, sweetly dissonant music together in “Memory,” a touch-and-go drama about connection that’s as steeped in discomfort as it is cautiously hopeful about one’s ability to find peace within it.

Writer-director Michel Franco’s take on an offbeat urban romance — between a social worker and a cognitively impaired, housebound man — has no use for easy or overwrought emotions or snap conclusions. Franco’s story implies that to really see someone on the inside is hard work. And doing so when nobody around you trusts your eyesight, much less your judgment? Even harder.

When we meet Chastain’s Sylvia, she’s the back of a head in a darkly lighted AA meeting. Members heap praise on her for how she’s handled her struggle across 13 years of sobriety, a span of time that corresponds to the age of her daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), also in tow.

In the outside world, where she works in adult day care and lives in a tightly secured apartment, Sylvia’s manner is hard-edged and solitary — and when it comes to Anna, who enjoys hanging out with her aunt Olivia ( Merritt Wever ) and same-age cousins, as watchful as a hawk. Silvia looks ill at ease around her extended family, or is it just anyone who’s not her daughter?

Her unease palpably becomes ours, though, when she’s followed home from her high school reunion by a shaggy-looking attendee who then camps outside her building overnight in the pouring rain. Gentle-seeming but clearly not well, Saul (Sarsgaard) is picked up the next morning by his brother Isaac (Josh Charles), which is when we learn that the former suffers from dementia and lives unsupervised in his brownstone, occasionally looked after by Isaac and an adoring niece ( Elsie Fisher ).

Healing, connection, optimism’: Peter Sarsgaard takes ‘Memory’ beyond the dementia

“I find it so gratifying that people are emotional watching this. They have a feeling of unity and optimism,” the actor says.

Dec. 20, 2023

Sylvia, however, is convinced that smiling, polite Saul is actually a figure from her traumatic childhood who recognized her that night. When she initiates a follow-up visit, the gesture appears charitable but comes with a pent-up confrontation in mind. In its clarifying wake, however, a tenderness develops between these damaged souls, one that becomes increasingly difficult to understand for their respective families — including the mother Sylvia won’t speak to, for reasons that become disturbingly clear as things combust in the final act. (Even before we know what we suspect, Jessica Harper ’s few scenes vividly suggest a manipulative affluence worth purging.)

Franco is a cool-headed ironist with a flair for oblique narrative and a fascination with the detached worlds of the wealthy. In taut, violent oddities of disintegration like “New Order” and “Sundown,” his style can translate into a bracing, compelling distance that’s not for all tastes. But because “Memory” is, at root, a story of people finding each other, the vibe is more reminiscent of Franco’s caretaking character study “Chronic,” while still touching on the abiding peculiarities of people who come from money and what’s always simmering in broken people. More directly than his previous films, his penchant for long takes with minimal intercutting seeds an emotional suspense, for us as well as the fragile humans inside cinematographer Yves Cape’s cool, steady frame.

Chastain and Sarsgaard use that time and space well too, playing out what’s unspoken and making real their characters’ budding, unsentimental closeness. There are whole areas of this twosome’s bond that remain unexplained. Ultimately, that feels like a virtue of the movie, rather than a flaw.

Franco’s way with a heartfelt story means foregrounding a feral alertness to danger to get us to appreciate the warmth its protagonists are waiting to bestow. But it’s also what’s admirably adult about “Memory.” It’s a movie that understands fully how nothing about our lives is a given, and that if you look hard enough at yours, there’s always something worth escaping from and running toward.

Rating: R, for some sexual content, language and graphic nudity Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Playing: AMC Century City 15

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‘Memory’ Review: A Trauma Plot

In this contrived movie, Peter Sarsgaard stars as a man with dementia, and Jessica Chastain plays a caretaker with buried family secrets.

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By Manohla Dargis

In “Memory,” a woman haunted by her past meets a man who’s scarcely holding onto his. That’s the setup in the writer-director Michel Franco’s contrived drama with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, whose work in this artsified slab of exploitation cinema is strong enough that you wish their characters would run off to an entirely different movie.

Chastain plays Sylvia, a recovering alcoholic with a day job caring for disabled adults. She and her sweet teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber), have a spacious, sunlit apartment in an industrial-looking building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. There’s a tire store next door and multiple locks on their apartment door. Each time Sylvia returns home, she fastens the locks and arms the alarm with great deliberation, a ritual that Franco repeatedly presents. It’s a habit that like Sylvia’s wariness and physical reserve — she doesn’t readily make eye contact and tends to cross her arms in front of her chest — underscores her guardedness.

One night, Sylvia and her sister, Olivia (the always welcome Merritt Wever), attend a high-school reunion. There, a visibly uncomfortable Sylvia withdraws into herself, but when a man — Sarsgaard as Saul — approaches her, she splits for reasons that become torturously clear only later. He follows her onto the subway and all the way to her building’s front door, where he stays even when it begins pouring. The next morning, Sylvia finds him shivering and near-incoherent, sitting in a spare tire on the ground. It turns out that Saul has early-onset dementia and lives in his handsome brownstone, watched over by his no-nonsense brother, Isaac (Josh Charles), whose daughter, Sara (Elsie Fisher), comes and goes.

Soon, Sylvia begins taking care of Saul part-time, a job that turns intimate and then unsurprisingly romantic. The relationship doesn’t cohere dramatically, alas, despite the demonstrative tenderness and commitment that the actors bring to it, and the story’s multiple gaps in logic don’t help. It doesn’t make sense that Isaac, who comes off as a fairly self-important professional, doesn’t have any hired help when Sylvia arrives, especially given the family’s obvious economic resources. (I also seem to have missed the scene when he runs a background check on her.) Like Olivia’s husband and kids, a collection of bland types, Isaac mainly serves as a convenient bourgeois prop that Franco can swing at before blowing it up.

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Two strangers grapple with hazy 'Memory' in this unsettling film

Justin Chang

Jessica Chastain plays a single mother who connects with a man with early-onset dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) in Memory . via Ketchup Entertainment hide caption

Jessica Chastain plays a single mother who connects with a man with early-onset dementia (Peter Sarsgaard) in Memory .

The Mexican writer-director Michel Franco is something of a feel-bad filmmaker. His style can be chilly and severe. His characters are often comfortable bourgeois types who are in for some class-based comeuppance. His usual method is to set up the camera at a distance from his characters and watch them squirm in tense, unbroken long takes.

Sometimes all hell breaks loose, as in Franco's dystopian drama New Order , about a mass revolt in Mexico City. Sometimes the nightmare takes hold more quietly, like in Sundown , his recent slow-burn thriller about a vacation gone wrong.

I haven't always been a fan of Franco's work, not because I object to pessimistic worldviews in art, but because his shock tactics have sometimes felt cheap and derivative, borrowed from other filmmakers. But his new English-language movie, Memory , is something of a surprise. For starters, it's fascinating to see how well-known American actors like Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard adapt to his more detached style of filmmaking. And while his touch is as clinical and somber as ever, there's a sense of tenderness and even optimism here that feels new to his work.

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'femininity is not weakness,' jessica chastain says of 'zookeeper's wife'.

Chastain plays Sylvia, a single mom who works at an adult daycare center. From the moment we meet her, at an AA meeting where people congratulate her on her many years of sobriety, it's clear that she's been through a lot. She's intensely protective of her teenage daughter, rarely letting her hang out with other kids, especially boys. Whenever she returns home to her Brooklyn apartment, she immediately locks the door behind her and sets the home security system. Even when Sylvia's doing nothing, we see the tension in her body, as if she were steeling herself against the next blow.

One night, while attending her high school reunion, Sylvia is approached by a man named Saul, played by Sarsgaard. He says nothing, but his silent attentiveness unnerves Sylvia, especially when he follows her home and spends the night camped outside her apartment. The next morning, Sylvia learns more about Saul that might help explain his disturbing behavior: He has early-onset dementia and suffers regular short-term memory loss.

Some of the backstory in Memory is confusing by design. Sylvia remembers being sexually abused by a 17-year-old student named Ben when she was 12, and she initially accuses Saul of having abused her too. We soon learn that he couldn't have, because they were at school at different times. It would seem that Sylvia's own memory, clouded by personal pain, isn't entirely reliable either.

Despite the awkwardness and tension of these early encounters, Sylvia and Saul are clearly drawn to each other. Seeing how well Saul responds to Sylvia's company, his family offers her a part-time job looking after him during the day. As their connection deepens, they realize how much they have in common. Both Sylvia and Saul feel like outcasts. Both, too, have issues with their families; Saul's brother, played by Josh Charles, treats him like a nuisance and a child. And while Sylvia is close to her younger sister, nicely played by Merritt Wever, she's been estranged for years from their mother, who refuses to believe her allegations of sexual abuse.

The movie poignantly suggests that Sylvia and Saul are two very different people who, by chance, have come into each other's lives at just the right moment. At the same time, the story does come uncomfortably close to romanticizing dementia, as if Saul's air of friendly, unthreatening bafflement somehow made him the perfect boyfriend.

But while I have some reservations about how the movie addresses trauma and illness, this is one case where Franco's restraint actually works: There's something admirably evenhanded about how he observes these characters trying to navigate uncharted waters in real time. Chastain and Sarsgaard are very moving here; it's touching to see how the battle-hardened Sylvia responds to Saul's gentle spirit, and how he warms to her patience and attention.

This isn't the first time Franco has focused on the act of caregiving; more than once I was reminded of his 2015 drama, Chronic , which starred Tim Roth as a palliative care worker. I didn't love that movie, either, but it had some of the same unsettling intimacy and emotional force as Memory . It's enough to make me want to revisit some of Franco's work, with newly appreciative eyes.

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Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard Are So Weirdly Right Together in Memory

This review was originally published on September 9. We are recirculating it now timed to Memory’ s debut in theaters.

The waning days of a film festival aren’t generally regarded as a time for great discoveries or major premieres. Much of the press has left, and those that remain have become a bit more cavalier about attending screenings; many of them are out shopping for delicate souvenirs and resilient cheeses to take home. At this year’s Venice , when star power was already notoriously hard to come by owing to the ongoing SAG-WGA strike, you could be forgiven for assuming that the party was pretty much over.

But then, here comes Memory , starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, one of the few films at this year’s festival allowed to have its stars attend its premiere. Appropriately so, too, because it’s almost entirely their show. Mexican director Michel Franco’s somber drama about the ghosts of the past has a lot on its mind, and not all of it makes sense. But its two leads are so good together, so weirdly right together, that everything slips away and you just watch them.

Perhaps this is all by design. Memory is such a lean work that Chastain and Sarsgaard are allowed to dominate much of the screen, even just physically. She plays Sylvia, a single mother 13 years sober who works at an adult daycare center while raising her teenage daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber). We sense her protectiveness early on with the swiftness and thoroughness she shows in locking her apartment door whenever she steps inside, with the way she watches Anna from across the street during recess at school. When someone comes to repair her fridge, Sylvia notes that she had specifically requested a woman. Chastain makes Sylvia’s simmering anxiety palpable, though in decidedly unshowy fashion. Something clearly broke in her a long time ago, and we sense that she’s spent a lot of time trying to hold it all together and move on.

One night, while attending her high school reunion, Sylvia is silently confronted by a man, Saul Shapiro (Sarsgaard). He says nothing, just sits next to her and stares. She says nothing back, just leaves. He follows her to the subway, then to her apartment. He stands outside her building, and in the morning she finds him curled up among the tires of the auto shop downstairs, shivering and incoherent. She takes his wallet and calls a number. It turns out that Saul suffers from dementia, often forgetting where he is and wandering away from the home in which he lives with his brother (Josh Charles). But Sylvia remembers Saul. In fact, she claims that he was a close friend of the boy who raped her when she was 12. What’s more, she claims that Saul also raped her once. “Do you remember what you used to make me do?” she asks him angrily the next time they meet, “or do you only remember when it’s convenient?” He stares at her blankly. He doesn’t remember a thing.

Here’s where the movie gets interestingly thorny, at least briefly. Sylvia’s sister Olivia (Merritt Wever) informs her that she is, in fact, wrong about Saul – that he started school the year she left and that he couldn’t have done the things she claims he did. This coincides with Saul’s family asking if Sylvia might be willing to help care for him during the day. She agrees, and before we know it, she and this man whom she briefly thought was a monster are suddenly spending a lot of time together. Is it something about his blankness, his gentle acceptance that attracts her? Sylvia’s daughter is getting to that age when she’s starting to rebel against her clearly overprotective mom’s edicts. And now here’s this grown man who will do anything she says, and who clearly loves just being there with her, largely because there’s nothing else he can do.

Franco’s script is so spare that we have relatively little to latch onto – almost as if the film is itself in the process of forgetting certain details. Sylvia’s accusation of Saul is barely discussed once it’s all cleared up, which seems odd for this woman to whom the past feels so resilient, so eternally corrosive. In fact, the movie turns out not to be about their common history at all, but rather their very odd, increasingly loving present.

Luckily, we have these two actors, who when together feel like a chemical reaction come to life. Her tension is transformed by his pleasant pliancy, and vice-versa. Sylvia is burdened by a swirl of memories — most of which we get only hints of — confronted by a man who can’t remember increasingly vast stretches of his life. As their relationship grows in tenderness, we pull for them, even as we sense that something horrifying might be around the corner.

The film is on less firm ground when it actually tries to untangle Sylvia’s past. The inevitable revelations about what happened to her are fairly predictable, though no less harrowing for being so. It does feel at times like Franco wants to resolve these elements quickly and get on with the rest of his movie. There’s a climactic scene in which Sylvia confronts her family that’s riveting in the moment because it’s so well-acted, but its impact dissolves the second you start to think further about it. Even so, this is clearly a film that’s meant to be carried by its leads. And as a showcase for these stars, Memory works superbly.

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Memory Review

Despite the fact that Michel Franco’s new film focuses on an alcoholic grappling with the lingering effects of child abuse, Memory may well be his most buoyant work yet. The Mexican director, known for his violent and unforgiving plots ( After Lucia , Chronic ), is often considered something of a cinematic sadist who enjoys inflicting as much pain as possible onto his characters. This time, however, his trademark brand of screen cruelty finds a more optimistic narrative — almost feel-good in its theme of redemption.

That isn’t initially clear when we’re first introduced to Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), a recovering addict who works with adults living with learning disabilities. With a grim- set expression, her life is elaborately planned: AA meetings, a stern approach to childcare duties, a Fort Knox-like alarm system to protect her house. After meeting a kind but disoriented ex-schoolmate named Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), Sylvia’s walls slowly come down... only to show us just how deep the roots of abuse can grow, tangling and tugging below the surface.

Memory feels so compelling precisely because it keeps its cards close to its chest.

Franco has, rather unexpectedly, made a shrewd movie about the precarity of healing from trauma. Sylvia’s frequently cruel demeanour — “You deserve to be the way you are,” she says to Saul, abandoning him in the woods without his Emergency Contact lanyard — proves how the path of recovery can morph into quicksand at the slightest perceived threat or trigger. Sylvia isn’t a perfect victim, but someone whose past has hardened her into a contradictory figure that often goes against the grain.

Opposite Chastain, Sarsgaard is equally worthy. Saul’s dementia is not presented purely as a form of suffering, but is instead something that can enhance his capability for empathy; when Sylvia discloses a painful memory to him, he asks her permission to write it down so that he doesn’t forget — just one of many moments that twangs at the heartstrings. Instead of having him monologue about his condition, we get astute directorial touches instead: Saul first enters the frame out of focus, and later is speaking but framed from the neck-down — canny choices to highlight his cognitive blur, the separation between mind and body. Is he lovesick? Is he trapped in a hazy brain-prison of looped thoughts? Or is that sort of the same thing, sometimes?

Many films that deal with similar themes to this can come across as cheap in the way they reach for tear-jerking moments. But save for some moments of unnecessary exposition, Memory feels so compelling precisely because it keeps its cards close to its chest.

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Common Sense Media Review

Violent Neeson action thriller is meaty but not memorable.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Memory is a thriller starring Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis, an assassin who's trying to stop a sex-trafficking operation . Alex is experiencing cognitive decline, and as he pivots to helping law enforcement, he begins to be perceived sympathetically -- but despite the movie's…

Why Age 16+?

Intense, graphic, and bloody violence. Frequent gun use, including high-powered

Strong language throughout, including "a--hole," "bastard," "bulls--t," "p---y"

Sex workers shown in several scenes. One is seen sleeping with the main characte

Several characters smoke cigarettes or cigars. Drinking throughout. Main charact

Wealth is depicted as a method of power: If you have money, you're above the law

Any Positive Content?

Law enforcement/FBI teams include characters of color. Long delays at U.S. immig

It's never too late to do the right thing. But also suggests that if you have mo

FBI agents tirelessly fight to try to bring down a sex trafficking ring, even wh

Violence & Scariness

Intense, graphic, and bloody violence. Frequent gun use, including high-powered rifles. Physical fighting. Strangling/slit throats. Knifings. Verbal description of murders. Young teen is sex trafficked (and is depicted as seeming OK with it, defending the arrangement and the people putting her up to it), and surveillance footage captures the moments beforehand.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language throughout, including "a--hole," "bastard," "bulls--t," "p---y" (used as an insult), and frequent use of "f--k." Threats. "Swear to G-d." Sexual terms like "blowie."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Sex workers shown in several scenes. One is seen sleeping with the main character (with the implication they'd had sex); another with the implication that she's prepping for sex. Full backside male nudity. Suggestive conversation. A woman comes on to someone by pulling her top down; only her shoulders are seen.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Several characters smoke cigarettes or cigars. Drinking throughout. Main character's prescription medication is a plot point, but it's not misused.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Wealth is depicted as a method of power: If you have money, you're above the law.

Diverse Representations

Law enforcement/FBI teams include characters of color. Long delays at U.S. immigration processing centers are central to the story, and the film shows a Mexican detective working with the FBI to try to stop the child exploitation tied to these problems. Female FBI agent is equally capable as her male counterparts. Sex workers depicted with compassion. A character with cognitive decline is portrayed sympathetically.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

It's never too late to do the right thing. But also suggests that if you have money, you're above the law.

Positive Role Models

FBI agents tirelessly fight to try to bring down a sex trafficking ring, even when their efforts are continually thwarted by outside forces. But the story also follows an assassin who's intended to be seen heroically.

Parents need to know that Memory is a thriller starring Liam Neeson as Alex Lewis, an assassin who's trying to stop a sex-trafficking operation . Alex is experiencing cognitive decline, and as he pivots to helping law enforcement, he begins to be perceived sympathetically -- but despite the movie's reminder that it's never too late to do the right thing, he's a killer, not a hero. Several hits occur on screen, with the camera lingering on the act and its bloody aftermath -- expect shootings, stabbings, slit throats, explosions, and physical fights. Long delays at U.S. immigration processing centers are central to the story, and the film shows a Mexican detective working with the FBI to try to stop the child exploitation tied to these problems. Sex workers (including a 13-year-old) are depicted compassionately, shown in the moments before and after sex (in one scene, a man's bare backside is seen). Expect smoking, drinking, and strong language ("f--k," "a--hole," etc.) throughout. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say
• Kids say (1)

There aren't any parent reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.

What's the Story?

In MEMORY (a remake of the 2003 Belgian thriller Memory of a Killer) , aging assassin Alex Lewis ( Liam Neeson ) is ready to retire, but his employer insists that he take one last job. When he realizes he's been hired to kill a teen girl, he refuses to complete the job. This puts a target on his back, and as he learns more about the dangerous criminal organization that hired him -- uncovering a child sex-trafficking ring that's using the difficulties at the U.S. Southern border to their advantage -- Alex decides to put an end to them. Meanwhile, FBI agent Vincent Serra ( Guy Pearce , whose casting is a wink to the memory-impaired character he played in Memento ) and his child exploitation task force feel like they're the only ones who care. But with an inability to produce convictions, the division is being shut down.

Is It Any Good?

While Neeson is playing yet another character who has "a certain set of skills," he does bring nuance to the role of Alex Lewis, an aging assassin who's dealing with cognitive decline. His enlightening performance -- and this unusual angle -- elevates a standard hitman-for-hire story into a thought-provoking one. Are "bad" people just bad, or do they have their own ethical boundaries? And when they decide to do the right thing, should we view them differently? Director Martin Campbell toys with viewers to some degree, allowing us to feel compassion and root for Alex and then slapping us with a cold reminder that he doesn't deserve our warm feelings.

Campbell, who was also behind the James Bond films Casino Royale and Goldeneye , is definitely creating a violent Liam Neeson actioner here, rather than a popcorn 007 flick. The killings are very graphic, and the story upsetting. The director knows what he's doing, and Memory is a well-made film, but some things fall through the cracks, including a few supporting actors whose performances are so bad, they're laugh-inducing. Additionally, opting to make a 13-year-old character who's being trafficked seemingly supportive of the decision to be used as a sex worker is bizarre. The end result is that Memory gives you something to think about for a week or two but is ultimately forgettable.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Memory's violence . How realistic is it? What techniques do filmmakers use to create realistic violence, as opposed to fantasy violence? Which has greater impact?

What does it mean to be complicit? Why is permitting or covering up bad actions also illegal and immoral, even if you're not the one committing the crime?

How can a common cause bring together people who otherwise would never be on the same side? How can we use common ground as a way to reach those who don't share our beliefs or behaviors?

Parents, discuss the realities of human trafficking. If you suspect someone is being exploited, call the National Human Trafficking hotline: (888) 373-7888.

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 29, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : July 5, 2022
• Cast : Liam Neeson , Guy Pearce , Monica Bellucci
• Director : Martin Campbell
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Open Road Films
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 114 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : violence, some bloody images and language throughout
• Last updated : September 23, 2022

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Sylvia is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life. This is blown open when Saul follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impac... Read all Sylvia is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life. This is blown open when Saul follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impact both of them as they open the door to the past. Sylvia is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life. This is blown open when Saul follows her home from their high school reunion. Their surprise encounter will profoundly impact both of them as they open the door to the past.

• Michel Franco
• Alan Nehama
• Dutch Welch
• Aliya Campbell
• 27 User reviews
• 105 Critic reviews
• 71 Metascore
• 2 wins & 4 nominations

Top cast 49

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• Trivia According to Variety, Jessica Chastain recommended Peter Sarsgaard for the role of Saul.
• Connections Features Basquiat (1996)
• Soundtracks A Whiter Shade of Pale Written by Keith Reid , Gary Brooker , and Matthew Fisher Published by TRO - Essex Music, Inc.

User reviews 27

• pietro-mizeria
• Nov 9, 2023
• How long is Memory? Powered by Alexa
• January 5, 2024 (United States)
• United States
• New York City, New York, USA
• High Frequency Entertainment
• Case Study Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $100,000 (estimated)
• Dec 24, 2023

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• Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes

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‘I’m Still Here’ Review: Walter Salles’ Profoundly Moving Sense-Memory Portrait of a Family — and a Nation — Ruptured

The heartbreaking story of Rubens Paiva's 1970 disappearance at the hands of the Brazilian military dictatorship is recounted, with beauty and dignity, through the eyes of the wife and children who lived through it.

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Walter Salles ‘ deeply poignant “I’m Still Here,” the Brazilian director’s return to his homeland and to the filmmaking form that yielded his Oscar-nominated “Central Station,” begins where maybe every movie set in Rio de Janeiro should: at the beach. A stray dog disturbs a game of volleyball. Girls dab Coca-cola onto their skin as tanning lotion. Little kids play football and flirty teens trade gossip about pop stars and boys they like. In the sparkling water, Eunice Paiva (a stunning turn from Salles regular Fernanda Torres) floats on her back, squinting against the sun. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. But there is a helicopter.

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Perhaps if the focus was solely on the loss of Rubens — a beloved father and husband who was moved by his conscience to help the opponents of the regime in secret — the hue of nostalgia that drenches the movie would become maudlin. But Salles’ real focus (and that of the book by Rubens’ son Marcelo on which the film is based) is resilience, especially as demonstrated by Eunice, who is entirely embodied in Torres’ superb performance. The kind of woman who is effortlessly elegant in every outfit, and whose soufflés never stick to the pan, after her husband’s abduction and her own terrifying ordeal, Eunice’s resourcefulness in raising her children and starting anew despite her enormous grief and the cruel denial of her husband’s fate by the authorities, become the backbone of a story of survivorship and quiet courage.

Classical in form but radical in empathy, “I’m Still Here” arguably does not need the follow-up sections — one set in 1996 and the other in 2014 — that somewhat alter the emotional rhythm. But on the other hand, these characters are so vivid that we don’t want to leave them either, and Eunice’s campaign for the official recognition of her husband’s forced disappearance was a process that took many years to bear fruit. Not only that, but the 2014 epilogue allows us a glimpse of Salles’ “Central Station” star and Torres’ mother, Fernanda Montenegro, in a brief role as the older Eunice.

And perhaps most crucially, having the film end with Eunice’s now even more extended clan gathered once again in an airy garden for a smiling family photograph, turns it into a cautionary tale, addressed to those forces in Brazil and beyond, who would seek a return to repression and rule by fear. The national spirit you seek to subdue will outlast you. The people you try to oppress will live to see you reviled and rejected by history, while those who resist will have songs and stories written about them. They will inspire music and art in celebration of their lives and will have movies as heartsore and beautiful as “I’m Still Here” made in their honor.

Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (Competition), Sept. 1, 2024. Running time: 137 MIN. (Original title: "Ainda estou aqui")

• Production: (Brazil-France) A VideoFilmes, RT Features, MACT Productions production in co-production with Arte France Cinéma, Conspiração, Globoplay. (World Sales: Goodfellas, Paris.) Producers: Maria Carlota Bruno,  Rodrigo Teixeira, Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre. Executive Producers: Guilherme Terra, Thierry de Clermont-Tonnerre, Lourenço Sant’anna, Renata Brandão, Juliana Capelini, David Taghioff, Masha Magonova.
• Crew: Director: Walter Salles. Screenplay: Murilo Hauser, Heitor Lorega, based on the book ‘Ainda Estou Aqui’ by Marcelo Rubens Paiva. Camera: Adrian Teijido. Editor: Affonso Gonçalves. Music: Warren Ellis.
• With: Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Valentina Herszage, Luiza Kozovski, Bárbara Luz, Cora Mora, Guilherme Silveira, Maria Manoella, Marjorie Estiano, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, Olivia Torres, Antonio Saboia, Fernanda Montenegro. (Portuguese dialogue)

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Venice Review: Sarah Friedland’s Wonderfully Gentle Familiar Touch Heralds a New Voice

In a sunny kitchen in California, Ruth prepares a sandwich with the muscle memory that only a lifetime allows. Bread is toasted and left to cool; dill is picked and chopped efficiently; sour cream, radish, and salmon are arranged to resemble a blooming flower. After going to get ready, she serves it to a man named Steve (H. Jon Benjamin) who she doesn’t seem to recognize. When he tells her he’s an architect, she responds, “My father builds homes. Maybe you’ll meet him one day.” Caught off-guard, her son can only offer a loving smile and say “I’d like that.”

This uncertain space––part clarity, part blur––is the subject of Sarah Friedland’s moving debut feature Familiar Touch . It’s the story of an older woman whose dementia causes her to shift between age identities, occasionally around her 80-something self, though sometimes a more gregarious and flirtatious 25. Friedland shot most of it in Villa Gardens, a continuing care center in Pasadena where Steve brings Ruth during the opening sequence, leaving her just as the penny drops. She will spend the film coming to terms with her situation there, befriending care workers Brian (Andy McQueen) and Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle) while getting acquainted with the changing rhythms of her life.

It’s a wonderfully gentle piece of filmmaking––something of a low-key triumph that offers a novel perspective on a topic that had become, if not entirely worn out, at least clichéd. Friedland’s deceptively complex approach is to tell Ruth’s story from her perspective instead of a loved one’s, and without ever fully revealing what’s happening in there. The film features no lengthy monologues and is sparing with its character’s suffering––at least not beyond the realities of her situation. The experiences we witness in Villa Gardens are largely pleasant: finding some agency by helping out in the kitchen, allowing herself some playful moments in her check-ups with Brian, and making a genuine connection with Vanessa. Even in her most difficult moments, Familiar Touch stays rooted on her side, allowing Ruth to rally with dignity when despair seems the more likely outcome. All of this is filmed (by Friedland’s regular collaborator Gabe Elder) with an intimacy that never feels intrusive or merely observational.

For her first time working with actors, Friedland has rounded up an endearing troupe: McQueen, Michelle, and Jon Benjamin (the voice of no less than Bob from Bob’s Burgers ) each find just the ratio of warmth and weariness required of their roles. And then there is Chalfant, who brings a tremendous amount of inner life to a character who is not always clear which inner life is her own. Chalfant began her career on stage (getting her big break in Angels in America and an Obie win for Wit in 1999) but is probably better known for her work in television ( The Affair , various Law & Order s). She appeared in The Last Days of Disco and more recently in Old , but Familiar Touch is a rare lead. I would be very happy to see more.

Friedland began making films as far back as 2014. Her work to now has focused on bodies and movement, with conceptual pieces that occasionally intersected with her work as caregiver for artists suffering neurodegenerative diseases. For Familiar Touch , the director draws from each of those experiences and memories of visiting her grandmother, an artist and intellectual who developed dementia and became non-verbal some years ago. Friedland has talked about the way her family would speak about her grandmother as if she was already gone, even though her personality still came out in different ways. That thoughtfulness and sensitivity are all over Friedland’s debut feature, a film that announces the arrival of a new voice on an independent scene that will be richer for it.

Familiar Touch premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

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The Memory in My Heart

Cast & crew.

Marc Martinez

Lexie Lovering

Diana Elizabeth Torres

Solyana Girum

Glenn Lawrence

Eddie Navarro