Memory (2024)

Direction: Michel Franco
Country: USA

Mexican writer-director Michel Franco, whose body of work includes After Lucia (2012) and Chronic (2015), returns with Memory, a taut, beautifully composed drama where every moment holds weight. The film traces the journey of Sylvia (Jessica Chastain), a Brooklyn-based social worker, single mother, and recovering alcoholic, who discovers a sense of solace in her strained family dynamics through her relationship with Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), a stranger grappling with early onset dementia. However, things get complicated as they grow closer.

There’s a real emotional heft to Memory as it weaves together themes of trauma, resentment, guilt, hope, and healing. Chastain and Sarsgaard give life to understated yet memorable characters with their riveting performances.

Assuring that his fine narrative development leads to a positively simplistic resolution, Franco directs the film with both elemental allure and haunting familiarity. He skillfully shapes every aspect of this poignant exploration of healing love with an ultra-realistic vision and precise calibration, avoiding clichés or despair while maintaining authenticity.

The Good Nurse (2022)

Direction: Tobias Lindholm
Country: USA 

The thrillers of Danish director Tobias Lindholm got famous for their glows and agitation, but The Good Nurse, a harrowing true story abated by banality, doesn't hold up as well as you'd expect. Screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns worked from the 2013 true crime book by Charles Graeber. 

The film boasts Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne in the center roles. She is Amy Loughren, a proficient if tired nurse and single mother of two, who has been struggling with cardiomyopathy crisis. He is Charlie Cullen, a self-assured and helpful nurse who worked in nine hospitals over 16 years, leaving a trace of silent death behind him. When he arrives at the ICU of Parkfield Memorial Hospital in New Jersey, it was a huge relieve for Amy, who couldn’t guess her patients would be in danger. A mysterious death leads to an investigation by two relentless detectives (played by Nnamdi Asomugha and Noah Emmerich), leaving them stuck in a web of lies, cynicism and cover-ups. 

Rather than shocked or terrified, you follow the course of events fairly intrigued and sometimes amused. But this is not enough. This monotonous crime drama awkwardly and stiffly arrives at its revelations, managing little more than a gesture toward untying inextricable knots. It’s weak as a thriller and particularly disappointing following Lindholm's exceptional past work (A Hijacking, 2012; A War, 2015).

Quite simply: this is something you could read about in a few paragraphs, and the film fails to present any type of dilemma during its passionless narrative. Cullen’s character should have been better explored and details of his personal life revealed to help us gain some interest and overcome indifference.

The Forgiven (2022)

Direction: John Michael McDonagh
Country: UK

This adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s book of the same name by director John Michael McDonagh isn’t exactly flat at its core, but it never comes together, resulting in an almost entirely predictable misfire. Bolstered with the solid acting of Ralph Fiennes (The Constant Gardener, 2005; Spider, 2002) and Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty, 2012; The Eyes of Tammy Faye, 2021), The Forgiven says too little as it attempts to formulate a direct critique of the cynical, hedonistic, and affluent Western dominance of African countries and the subjugation of their people. McDonagh, who impressed crowds with bold films such as The Guard (2011) and Calvary (2014), ran out of gas here as he sticks to a tightly wound narrative that, promising to surprise, lingers forever. He clearly looks for depth and maturity but ends up grabbing some dust in the air.

A terrible accident while driving through the Moroccan desert has profound repercussions on the lives of the Henningers, a wealthy British couple. He is David (Fiennes), a contemptuous alcoholic doctor whose words are constantly loaded with sarcasm; she is Jo (Chastain), a dissatisfied writer of children’s books who is open to new romantic adventures. While David agrees to be taken by the grieving Moroccan father (Ismael Kanater) whose son he ran over, Jo instantly forgets him, especially when Tom (Christopher Abbott), a gallant financial analyst from New York, is around. 

Superiority, mercy, compassion, and atonement are dutifully stitched into a diagrammatic patchwork that captures better the gut-ache of a broken 12-year marriage than anything else. A restrained, tepid tone is maintained throughout a drama film that should have added a little extra bite.