‘Memory’ review: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard glow as wounded souls making a connection

Jessica Chastain won Oscar for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and is Emmy-nominated for the Showtime series “George & Tammy” and the accolades are well-deserved in both cases. But it’s also great when Chastain sets aside the prosthetics and the wigs and the period-piece makeup and we can SEE her and be reminded she’s one of the most versatile and talented actors of her generation, as evidenced by her brilliant and technically proficient work in Michael Franco’s strange and unsettling and sometimes beautiful “Memory.”

This is a film in which characters make questionable and sometimes troubling choices right up until the final scene, and yet we understand why they do the things they do, and we root fiercely for things to work between them.

Chastain’s Sylvia is the fastidious and borderline OCD Sylvia, who is 13 years sober — which also happens to be the age of Sylvia’s daughter Anna (Brooke Timber, doing fine and natural work), and this is surely no coincidence. They live in an apartment in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, with Sylvia meticulously setting multiple locks and the alarm system every time she comes home, and regularly diving into rigorous bouts of house cleaning as a form of therapy whenever she’s feeling uneasy. After reluctantly agreeing to accompany her sister Olivia (Merritt Weaver, terrific as always) to a high school reunion, Sylvia suddenly bolts the alcohol-fueled event and is followed home by a fellow attendee named Saul (an excellent Peter Sarsgaard). Sylvia dashes inside and bolts those locks and sets the alarm.

The following morning, Sylvia finds a rain-soaked Saul huddled outside her door. Sylvia’s social work training kicks in; she realizes this man is not well. Saul’s brother Isaac (the reliable Josh Charles) picks him up, and we come to learn Saul has a form of dementia in which he remembers some things clearly but often fades into a place where he cannot take care of himself and forgets sizable chunks of his life, from the distant past to just a few minutes ago. (As Saul wryly notes at one point, watching movies is a futile exercise, because he can never remember the beginning by the time he gets to the end. When he goes to a restaurant, he’s greeted as a regular and he’s sure the food is good, but he can’t remember having been there.)

Sylvia agrees to become Saul’s caregiver, keeping watch on Saul in Saul’s brownstone apartment, but her motives are suspect at first, as she believes Saul was one of group of teenagers who sexually assaulted her when she was 12. (When Olivia does some digging and tells Sylvia the timeline doesn’t fit, that the sisters transferred to another school before Saul arrived there, we realize Saul isn’t the only one who is an unreliable narrator of their own life.)

Writer-director Franco has the confidence and ability to allow the dynamic between Sylvia and Saul to evolve in a natural and authentic way; they become friends first, and then a romance develops — a sweet and gentle embrace between two wounded and delicate souls. Still, we’re never far from being reminded of the precarious nature of this union, as when Saul finds himself standing outside of Sylvia’s and Anna’s bedrooms in the middle of the night and isn’t sure which is which and is paralyzed by the moment.

Relatively late in the story, the great Jessica Harper swoops in as Sylvia and Olivia’s mother, who has been estranged from Sylvia for decades and is just now meeting Anna for the first time — at Olivia’s house, behind Sylvia’s back. When Sylvia comes face to face with her mother, accusations fly and denials are issued, in a scene made even more impactful by Franco’s decision to keep the camera at a distance rather than cutting between anguish-laden closeups. We feel as if we’re in the room, and we can’t bring ourselves to leave, but we also wish we could be just about anywhere else at this moment. It’s a searing and powerful scene, with Chastain and Harper clashing in electric fashion.

This is the second movie this week, along with Daniel Levy’s “Good Grief,” to feature Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale.” In this case, it’s more than just a timely needle drop; it’s a song that has great meaning to Saul, and we hear it maybe a half-dozen times throughout the film. It is the perfect choice to reflect the beauty but also the pain of this story; we dearly want Sylvia and Saul to cut a swath through their respective pain and find comfort with one another, and we hold our breath hoping that happens.