The young and promising writer-director Michel Franco specializes in austere and unceremoniously brutal character pieces that toe the line between callous (“New Order”) and devastating (“Sundown”). Franco is fascinated with the emotional nitty-gritty that can be unearthed between the cracks of controversial issues, and he’s certainly bitten off a few with his new film “Memory,” which is initially structured as a compare-and-contrast between two damaged people who’re shackled by memory issues in opposing fashions.
Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is a social worker and a recovering alcoholic grappling with sexual abuse that she suffered as a teen — she is haunted by the past. Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), who went to high school with Sylvia, is suffering from early-onset dementia that sometimes suggests alcoholic blackouts, rhyming him with Sylvia somewhat, though he is her opposite— haunted by a lack of a past. Sometimes Saul is lucid, other times he’s wandering about with barely any idea of what he’s doing or where he’s been. When Sylvia and Saul meet after many years at a reunion, he appears to be stalking her, sleeping outside her apartment while she nervously locks herself in with her 13-year-old daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber).
These scenes have an edgy, random tempo, as if a romantic comedy has been restructured as a stalker thriller, and, come to think of it, aren’t most rom-coms stalker thrillers anyway, with sexual pleasure replacing dread? Franco ups the ante further: When Sylvia and Saul meet in a park, she accuses him of raping her in high school. Saul’s response is haunting: He isn’t defensive. Sarsgaard’s matter-of-factness here speaks truthfully of someone adjusting to a profound physical limitation. This is a pat, yet volatile scenario: the victim confronting the victimizer who, via a biological deus ex machina, is entirely free of guilt. Or are either of them who they appear to be? It’s as if Franco is on the verge of springing his own austere and topical version of “Death and the Maiden.”
The Franco of “New Order” may have doubled down hard on the most uncomfortable facets of this scenario, forcing his audience to confront the twin taboos of sexual abuse and mental impairment in one savage cocktail. “Memory” is in a gentler mode, though these issues cast a pall over it. Sylvia’s memory may also be flawed, and it is persuasively suggested that Saul wasn’t her tormenter. They drift into a tentative romance, and your relief at evading a potential nightmare might be laced with disappointment. That’s a lot of very loaded set-up for a romance, though Franco never allows us to get too comfortable.
Franco is already a master of atmosphere, carving out shrewd locations that stand in for an entire city, in this case New York City, and that testify to character. Saul, shielded by moneyed family members, is cocooned in a comfy apartment that feels like a boon and a trap at once. Sylvia’s apartment is sparer and — somehow, we’re permitted to sense this — colder. The centerpiece of “Memory” is Chastain and Sarsgaard’s rapport with one another. They are both magnificent: pared down and moving, without any showy effects.
Chastain, an Oscar-winning star, doesn’t give you an impression of wanting a gold ribbon for doing the cinematic equivalent of community service with a low-budget indie film. She’s fully committed. Chastain plays Sylvia in toto, not Sylvia’s past or disorders, and her sense of her character’s sensitivity as an alcoholic and survivor of abuse is uncannily realistic. (Most actors overdo it.) Sarsgaard, one of our most intelligent and underrated actors, matches Chastain step for step, imparting a sense of a personality slipping away. I’m guessing that established actors will continue to gravitate forward Franco, as a relief from the frenetic impersonality of Hollywood product. Chastain and Sarsgaard feel reborn here, as Tim Roth did in “Sundown.”
If the idea of damaged people completing one another with contrasting disorders sounds rigged, Hollywood-style, Franco and his actors find an aura and a sense of space that allow the concept to breathe. Franco has fused a story of trauma, traditional to his interests, with a wounded and modern romance, and he’s maintained his integrity in the process. A magic trick, especially for a January release.
Madeleine Gavin’s “Beyond Utopia” is another story of traps, without the comfort of fiction. It is a documentary with real footage of civilians attempting to escape North Korea, an authoritarian state that’s cut off from the rest of the world. North Korea brainwashes its citizens with propaganda of its rulers’ divine heritage, amusingly ripping off the Bible wholesale. Outside media is forbidden, and starving and torture are rampant. Escape from North Korea involves a perilous journey. The border separating North and South Korea is an uncrossable demilitarized zone, and so a roundabout passage through China, who isn’t sympathetic to refugees, and Thailand and Laos is necessary. There are mountains and jungles to be braved, and risks of the brokers selling the escapees into sexual enslavement. These travesties are widely reported to the rest of the world, of course, but Gavin allows you to see them up close and intimately.
Gavin offers the audience a brief primer on the modern state of Korea, how it was split into North and South in the wake of World War II, and how South became a functional democracy in the wake of the influence of the United States, while North became a Soviet-sponsored dictatorship. This information is related succinctly, but the various personal stories of escaped North Korean citizens are the reasons to see the film. Soyeon Lee has escaped to South Korea, and is trying to help her son join her, though he’s been stymied by bis age and connection to his father. Soyeon feels as if she’s abandoned her son, and Gavin imparts the illusion of us waiting with her in real time as she awaits news.
More visceral still is the phone footage captured by the Ro family. We are right there with them as they crawl around in the mountains in the middle of the night, trying to cross the border into the safety of Thailand, where they can be transferred to South Korea. It is easy to talk of authoritarian states and trauma from a distance without really thinking about what it actually means, especially if you are a prosperous westerner. This footage defines escape as a terrifying and tedious contest of triumphing over one obstacle at a time. The darkness, a log, tripping over branches, and, most deviously, negotiating with corrupt brokers who’re trying to screw you for a greater percentage. In these passages, “Beyond Utopia” suggests “The Blair Witch Project” of escape thrillers, yet it is real.
One could nitpick. Gavin’s structure is casual, haphazardly alternating between the Ros, Soyeon, and the history lessons of North Korea. “Beyond Utopia” lacks the control of, say, the documentaries of Nanfu Wang, who deconstructs the hypocrisy and brutality of China with merciless concision. Gavin leaves certain fascinating subjects unexplored, such as the “deprogramming” that North Korean citizens experience when they enter South Korea. To be told that Kim Jong Un is a vain and petty thug rather than a god? The shock to the system is as unimaginable for most of us as a 10-hour hike into the mountains with a constant threat of death, and Gavin seems incurious about the implications of such a wake-up call. The Ros survive their ordeal and are relieved to be among the rest of the world. As Gavin communicates this information, it feels too easy, especially given the elder Ro woman’s belief in the divinity of the North Korean government.
But Gavin has organized raw and lurid footage, including footage of state-sanctioned torture, into a film that underscores in coherent and graspable terms precisely how a dictatorship sets about manipulating and destroying its citizens. That’s not a small achievement. Information is power, and it is all the more powerful still when laced with empathy, which Gavin possesses in abundance.
“Memory” is now playing at Movieland, while “Beyond Utopia” can be rented on various streamers.
