Memory
Ketchup Entertainment | Release Date: December 22, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
71
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
26
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 9, 2023
Memory invites debate, rather than imposing a specific interpretation. It’s also a film that lingers, shifting and expanding in significance, even as the details start to blur. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJan 3, 2024
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. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiz BraunJan 18, 2024
What is easy to watch are the superb performances from Chastain and Sarsgaard, both of whom are emotionally naked here. Their job is to convince you that despite the past, an odd and unexpected relationship may well flourish in future. Read full review
83
The Film StageDavid KatzSep 15, 2023
Chastain and Sarsgaard––ably supported by Josh Charles, Jessica Harper, and Elsie Fisher across the ensemble––are just fantastic, and find an ideal emotional register for Franco’s dramatic somersaults. Read full review
83
ColliderChase HutchinsonSep 10, 2023
If a film like this were to have anything less than perfection from its leads, it would likely fall to pieces. Thankfully, the story comes to life in the hands of two veteran performers at their very best. Read full review
83
IndieWireRyan LattanzioSep 9, 2023
Chastain and Sarsgaard give a pair of haunting, expert performances as damaged people making sense of their own agony together. Franco gets out of the way of his actors without manipulating them. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Ellen E JonesFeb 25, 2024
Gradually and delicately, Sylvia and Saul’s tessellating traumas are revealed by a beautifully balanced pair of lead performances. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 22, 2024
Franco is more skilled at getting us to think: not only about memory loss, but everything we choose to forget and can’t, and how these distinctions make us who we are. Read full review
80
Time OutDavid HughesFeb 22, 2024
It’s a testament to [Franco's] skill as a storyteller that Memory survives a calamitously mishandled plot point to slowly reveal itself to be his best work since 2012’s After Lucia, the first of three of his films to win awards in Cannes. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyFeb 22, 2024
Yves Cape’s unfussy, still camerawork never distracts. Chastain and Sarsgaard subtly work every acting muscle. (The latter deservedly took home the Volpi Cup from Venice last September.) Franco is kinder to these characters than he has been to many of his creations, leaving the viewer to parse the moral murk. Read full review
80
EmpireSteph GreenFeb 19, 2024
In a film that could have bowed to easy clichés, Chastain and Sarsgaard are a class act — their touching, tactile chemistry is the film’s triumph. Read full review
80
Total FilmNeil SmithFeb 16, 2024
Chastain and Sarsgaard make a riveting duo in a film that – like Franco’s Tim Roth double Chronic and Sundown before it – is in no great hurry to elucidate its mysteries. Read full review
80
Film ThreatPerry NortonJan 21, 2024
The whole film is an elegant inquiry into what happens when memory fails or when it just hurts so much it’s easier to try and forget. This portrait of broken people doing their best is an oblique and beautiful thing. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawJan 18, 2024
This is an absorbing story, acted with superlative delicacy and maturity by Chastain and Sarsgaard. Read full review
80
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzJan 18, 2024
Chastain and Sarsgaard find all the pieces of Franco’s Memory worth saving, and proceed to connect with one another to build something that is new, remarkable, affecting. Hard to forget, even. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithJan 5, 2024
The direct, intimate way in which the movie is filmed and acted, however, makes it an affecting study of two people’s attempts to forge some kind of relationship despite huge psychic damage on both sides. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleDec 22, 2023
A guarded Jessica Chastain and a rumpled Peter Sarsgaard make mysterious, sweetly dissonant music together in Memory, a touch-and-go drama about connection that’s as steeped in discomfort as it is cautiously hopeful about one’s ability to find peace within it. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 10, 2023
While hope is a quality not readily associated with the Mexican auteur’s work, it keeps surfacing here to extend a lifeline, even as we wait for the other shoe to drop. In that regard, Franco’s latest represents a slight departure, without surrendering the director’s signature austerity and intensity. He’s helped considerably by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, two riveting leads who hold nothing back. Read full review
75
ABC NewsPeter TraversJan 5, 2024
Fueled by performances worth treasuring from Chastain and Sarsgaard, this impossible love story between a woman who can't forget and man who can't remember slowly works its way into your mind and heart. Filmmaker Michel Franco makes sure you’ll be moved to tears. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 4, 2024
The tone is low-key, and Franco never presses the audience. Instead, he lets scenes happen, avoiding close-ups and all other means of exaggeration or emphasis. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsJan 2, 2024
Told through a humanist lens, it never resorts to simple sentimentality. Read full review
70
Screen RantAlex HarrisonSep 29, 2023
A lot happens, story-wise, but if the film had just followed Sylvia and Saul learning how to be around each other, it would've been enough. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 9, 2023
Mexican director Michel Franco’s somber drama about the ghosts of the past has a lot on its mind, and not all of it makes sense. But its two leads are so good together, so weirdly right together, that everything slips away and you just watch them. Read full review
63
The Associated PressLindsey BahrJan 3, 2024
Though it is not easily categorizable, “Memory” is a thoughtful journey featuring very fine performances from both Chastain and Sarsgaard, who was rewarded with the best actor prize from the Venice Film Festival last fall. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 14, 2023
The leads are pretty much flawless. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineMark HansonDec 13, 2023
The film reveals itself as a prototypical yet surprisingly tender love story between two damaged people re-learning how to move through a world that’s unable to adequately support them. Read full review
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