Mexican director Michel Franco is back in the Venice film Festival competition, for the 80th edition, with Memory, his first film led by Jessica Chastain and Peter Saarsgard.
It’s only the first collaboration with these two american actors of many he hopes to have in the future. Chastain and Saarsgard play Sylvia and Saul, two people meeting by chance and sort of slowly recognizing each other in their loneliness and choice of living at the margins of society.
Franco agrees that Memory explores both the concept of memory and of identity and it is, in a way, a love story as pure and fresh as those we live when we are coming of age. Memory also deals with mental illness and reflects on how people struggling with such issues is often, in the name of love, not allowed to live and enjoy life as every human being should.
Plot
Sylvia is a social worker who leads a simple and structured life: her daughter, her job, her AA meetings. 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.