Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard on memory and chemistry
“For me, it’s a very instinctive part. When your whole life is a survival instinct, you can’t really be guided by logical thinking,” says Memory star Jessica Chastain. “It’s fight or flight energy all the time.”
Chastain, speaking during a virtual press conference with Memory Writer/director Michel Franco and co-star Peter Sarsgaard play a survivor trying to find a way out of the situation. Her character, Sylvia, is a recovering alcoholic, and she hides the roots of her addiction deep in her memory. A high school reunion brings old wounds to the surface when Saul (Sarsgaard) sits down at her table. Without a word, Sylvia suddenly leaves the party. Saul, however, follows her home with an enchanted grin. Without saying a word between them, Memory leaves an unsettling feeling that illustrates Sylvia’s desire to escape.
For Franco, Memory continues his cinema of discomfort after the 2020 award winner New order. But the film gradually reveals a surprisingly sweeter side to his work as Sylvia and Saul confront the past. “I wanted to make a movie about broken people, two characters who shouldn’t have a second chance at love or anything else in life,” Franco says. “Two people who society tells them to just stay put and get away with it.”
Telling the true story
Chastain says the appeal of playing Sylvia was the complexity and avoidance of clichés in telling the story of a recovering drug addict and sexual assault survivor. “I loved that Sylvia felt like a real person, a person who makes very difficult decisions and is not always responsible for how she leads her life,” notes Chastain. “While filming, I became hooked on the idea of her daughter and their bond. “It helps almost keep her alive.” Chastain says working with young actor Brook Timber, who plays Sylvia’s daughter Anna, gave her a common ground. Despite Sylvia’s problems and her habit of not trusting everyone in her life (note the number of locks on her doors), she strives to be a better parent than her mother (Jessica Harper) was to her.
Sarsgaard admits that the early scenes, in which Saul chases Sylvia home, were some of the most difficult. Playing a character with dementia, Sarsgaard explains that Saul was unable to open up to the audience. “There is a plot point in this where I need to work as an actor. Audiences think things about me that are not true, and you don’t want to act out of character just to satisfy the plot and story,” Sarsgaard notes. “But I wanted the role to be joyful from the start.” Although Saul appears to be a complete freak from Sylvia’s point of view, Sarsgaard portrays him as a gentle romantic. “I wanted it to be a story about the person who has the condition, not the person who has the condition.”
Showdown
Sylvia and Saul’s secrets are revealed in a gripping scene that shapes Memorycentral place. Sylvia takes Saul into the forest and sits him on a log. In a daring feat that defies the expected tête-à-tête, Sylvia confronts Saul in hopes of triggering his memories. She tells him that he was among the boys who raped her in high school. Saul, however, responds with a blank stare. Apparently, he has absolutely no memory of these events.
“I, like Sylvia, and I’m sure like Jessica, was so excited to do that scene,” Chastain recalls. “I felt strong, like, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment and I’m going to kill it.’ “I had this energy, like a cat playing with a mouse.”
It’s the lack of explosive drama, however, that makes the confrontation so strikingly effective. Sylvia wants a fight, and Saul can’t give it to her. Franco emphasizes this tension with a long shot in which both actors are held on either side of the frame as Sylvia tries to make Saul squirm.
“We’re not eavesdropping on anything with Michel—this is the first time he’s filmed it all,” Chastain explains. “Peter’s great reaction in that scene was that he didn’t match my energy. Part of chemistry is when two people have different rhythms or different energies and they don’t match each other, so there’s tension in that difference. He was so calm, so sweet, so confused. He was the exact opposite of what Sylvia expected. She wanted to fight. “She was ready to shed blood.” Chastain says she felt the axis of power between the characters shift. By the end of the scene, she remembers hot tears rolling down her face and feeling like Sylvia had lost.
About trust and chemistry
“The great thing about the way Michel works is that he doesn’t light the stage,” Chastain adds. “He determines where the camera should be and it can move from take to take. He’s not really worried about continuity because we’re not juxtaposing anything. Each scene is essentially one take. When there are several actors in the frame, you can surprise each other.”
Sarsgaard, who won best actor at the Venice Film Festival for his role, says he approached the scene as a romantic one. For Saul, being taken into the forest by a beautiful woman he admires offers a chance to mend his relationship. But Sylvia’s aggressive response leaves him in shock. “By the end of the scene I say, ‘What do I know about myself?’ – Sarsgaard reflects. “Maybe I’m not me. Perhaps that is why I did not respond to her with anger. “I’m at a place in my life (like Saul) where anything can be true, anything is possible.”
He echoes Chastain’s thoughts about his chemistry and says: Memory often unfolded as the actors listened to each other and reacted accordingly. “The chemistry is something that exists because we are both open to listening to it. It just goes back and forth,” he says, gesturing with his hand at their synergy. “You can’t create this. If someone isn’t committed to it, it won’t happen.”
Representation of dementia and addiction
The actor adds that he drew on the experience of watching his uncle slip away from dementia to study Saul’s reaction. “Dementia is just a condition. This is an obstacle that prevents him from getting what he wants,” says Sarsgaard. “A big part of his struggle was how the people around him reacted to the diagnosis.” Saul’s family is overprotective of him, just as Sylvia is overprotective of Hannah from the world. As Saul and Sylvia’s love story unfolds, it becomes equally a drama about their right to assert their free will.
Meanwhile, Chastain gives one of the best portraits of a recovering addict in cinema. Memory Sylvia’s recovery is rooted in reality, as the film opens with Chastain attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Real survivors share their stories and Sylvia listens sympathetically. Chastain says she had no idea what Franco’s plan was for the scene until she arrived on the scene. “You don’t have to look like an actor in a scene when everyone else is showing this rawness and this vulnerability and this humanity,” she notes.
“You don’t want to pretend, so how can you dig really deep within yourself and make it as real as possible for yourself? That’s what the whole movie was like for me in every aspect, not just AA but where Sylvia works,” adds Chastain, whose character is a social worker. “This was the current house where the residents lived. I served them lunch, and the camera walked around and caught the moments when I was communicating and working there.”
A sobering portrait
Franco adds that everyone at the AA meeting agreed to be on camera and that he drew on his experience to construct Sylvia’s story. “They are survivors and I have a lot of respect for them,” Franco says. The director notes that he is opening Memory with an anniversary scene in which he attended similar recovery milestones for others in his life.
“The broken people you see here and there every day, we never know the half of what people go through.”
Memory now playing in select cinemas.
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