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Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard are unforgettable in 'Memory'
Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard portray two broken individuals who meet and fall in love in the Mexican-American drama film, "Memory," written and directed by Michel Franco.
She portrays Sylvia, a former alcoholic who is still traumatized by the emotional scars left when she was sexually abused as a child, while he portrays Saul, a man suffering from dementia.
For his performance, Sarsgaard won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor in the recently held 80th Venice International Film Festival.
Both Sarsgaard and Chastain were critically acclaimed for their performances. New York Vulture wrote, "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."
From the International Cinephile Society, they wrote, "Devoid of Franco's usual spurts of hyper-violence, Memory is a film that, no pun intended, will long linger on the mind because of its measured unfolding of the story and a gut-wrenching central performance by Jessica Chastain as a woman who reflects on the events that destroyed her life through a man that has trouble remembering her."
During the Q&A held at the 80th Venice International Film Festival, Chastain was asked why she thought Sarsgaard was the ideal actor for this role.
"Oh, I've always wanted to work with Peter and we've met a few times before this and we've talked about it. I've not been hidden in my fanship of his movies and who he is as an actor. He's a real artist. We were talking about this today a lot, sometimes an actor will change the script or the story to fit them and the best is when you change yourself to fit the story and that's Peter. I see that in everything he does. He's a shapeshifter and so it was a big pleasure."
As for her reaction when she first read the script, Chastain said, "I was very excited to read Michel's script, and as I was reading, it was right after the pandemic and also right after Time's Up and Me Too and as I started to read the story, I thought ah-huh-ha, I know what kind of film this is. OK, I get it. This is in response to what we've just been through, and this is some revenge drama.
"As I read it and it started to unfold to me, I was so moved by how it was the absence of any cliché that I could have imagined a film like this to hold within it. I was so moved by the story of this woman who had led her life, or she had led the trauma in her life in front of her. It's what she used as a shield, and it closed her off to the world. She used it as a shield to protect herself, she used it as a shield to protect her daughter and in essence, then really, she stopped living.
"How beautiful it was for her to watch this journey of her learning to live again, to open up, to find a relationship with someone who is not tied to any chains or memory of the past and sees her for who she is every single moment as new and as a rebirth, I found that to be incredibly inspiring. I know Michel really well. I know he doesn't write things for an audience impact. It always comes from an incredibly pure place. So, I find that to be even more moving that hopefully an audience will watch this film and have a cathartic experience since we've all moved out of this dark time and hopefully, we're heading towards something with more light."
On his role of a middle-aged man suffering from dementia, Sarsgaard revealed that he had experience with his uncle who suffered from the disease.
"This film came to me in a kind of magical way, it seemed to me. During COVID-19, my uncle who I was very close with, he died of CTE, which is from playing football, and boxing was his thing. This is a guy who was very important in my life. I felt like it was just a magical thing that this movie came to me. I'm being asked to play someone who has dementia at 52 years old, my uncle had it at 48.
"The thing about being around him that really did give me a lot for the role, is that he was so positive and happy and even to the day he died, which he died in a nursing home during COVID-19 when the staff had basically left and he was always just Bubba. Bubba is kind of southern for uncle, but I knew him as Bubba. He played center for LSU football team. He was then a boxer and then he was a fireman, but his spirit of positivity, love, grace and forgiveness, even when you thought like oh, is he forgiving me because he doesn't remember what happened? He sorts of pretended he knew everyone because he knew he knew no one. I thought it was beautiful."
Sarsgaard explained that his experience with his uncle helped him prepare for his role. He said, "So obviously I had my uncle. I'd been around him since I was 13, hung out with him a lot, especially when I was 13 and then for many years, he was in my life, but then he passed away and so I said I needed to talk to some people who have dementia, but that's a very awkward proposition."
He added, "So first I talked to some people who treat people with dementia and one of those guys, who was extremely helpful and gave me lots of information, really wanted to dispel a lot of our ill-conceived notions about what dementia entails and about what people with dementia can do. So, he said, 'I'm going to reach out to a couple of people who I work with and see if they'll be interested in talking to you.'
"And there was one guy in particular whom I had a very extensive series of phone calls with him, and he remembered me every time I called him, even if it was a week later. So that idea of sort of this fantasy notion of what dementia entails, because I think a lot of times when we've seen dementia in movies, it's been the most extreme at the very end and it paralyzes us all with fear, and I really didn't want to depict that. This is a story that I think the saddest part of this movie starts at the very end."
As for director Franco, when asked what led him to cast Chastain and Sarsgaard, he answered, "I'm a filmmaker who loves actors. Many directors are afraid of actors or don't know how to communicate with them or I don't know what nonsense. I love actors. When I'm sitting on my own for months writing, I dream of who's going to read these lines or who's going to make them sound a lot better than what I've written.
"I learned that Jessica was familiar with my films, she liked my work. I was very surprised and flattered and our agents were good at putting us together and they both knew it was the right fit. And then because I like deep collaborations with actors and because I knew that this film relies heavily on chemistry, I asked Jessica who was the best to play this role. And Peter's name was the first to come up. I had seen him in some movies. I thought it was a great idea. I was in here with my sister who's sitting there. We went for a coffee with Peter and five minutes later, I asked Peter to show me his tummy. I don't know why I had it and as soon as I saw his big tummy, I told Peter, 'It's yours. You got the role.' And also, I said, 'Don't shave. I hope you won't shave.'"
To which Sarsgaard simply admitted, "I don't really exercise at all, so..."
—MGP, GMA Integrated News
