Jessica Chastain’s New Film ‘Memory’ Is an Acting Olympics That Falters

VENICE, Italy—There are several enormous instances of Chekhov’s Gun in Memory.

The film, which premiered Friday at the Venice Film Festival, opens at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, where Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is celebrating her 13th year of sobriety. We later see her padlocking her front door. The instinct of most viewers would be to expect these things to turn up later in the narrative—a certain type of Hollywood drama calls for characters to fall off the wagon, or be forced to confront their worst fear.

But, in a scarcely believable development—especially considering that Michel Franco, this film’s director, has always indulged his penchant for cruelty and manipulation—Memory doesn’t serve up the whole platter of trauma porn that it had seemed to be preparing. What remains is a somewhat odd object, whose wealth of ideas and initially gritty outlook are gradually subsumed into a more conventional story, with performances that are perhaps a touch self-regarding.

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