Michel Franco on Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard Venice Competition Film ‘Memory’: ‘I’ve Always Been Interested in Broken People’

Guy Lodge Film Critic That perky exclamation point sets the tone for “Coup!,” a story of murder, class struggle, One Percent entitlement and a global pandemic that nonetheless unfolds with all the eager, scrappy energy of an off-Broadway musical, minus most of the songs. The pandemic in question is not the one you’re thinking of — Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman’s puckish comic thriller unfolds against the dire backdrop of the 1918 Spanish Flu — but it also sort of is, as its study of wealthy exceptionalism in a time of national crisis is clearly intended to chime with more recent memories of regimented distancing and mixed safety messages from on high.

Jessica Chastain is an A-list actress, but she is anything but a diva.

Jessica Chastain is shutting down rumours about her personality on set.

Jessica Chastain is speaking out to slam a headline that she says is “click bait.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Jessica Chastain earned stellar reviews out of the Venice and Toronto film festivals for her performance in Michel Franco’s “Memory,” but the role might have never materialized for the actor had Franco listened to some wrongful advice. Speaking to IndieWire, Chastain and Franco revealed that he was warned she’d be “a nightmare and a diva” to work with after winning the Oscar for best actress. Chastain went to film “Memory” shortly after winning the Academy Award for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” “Because I have been doing bigger things sometimes and have gotten a lot of attention as of late, [there’s been the idea] that I would not be interested in being on a set without a trailer,” Chastain said.

Jessica Chastain stars in Michel Franco’s Memory and some people had been putting thoughts in his head that this collaboration would not happen after she won at the Oscars.

After earning rave reviews after its recent Venice premiere, “Memory” (read our review here) has become one of the most buzzed-about films of the festival season. And it made people anxious to see whether or not Jessica Chastain would reteam with director Michel Franco in the future.

Naman Ramachandran Jessica Chastain will receive the Zurich Film Festival’s Golden Icon Award. Chastain will present her latest film “Memory” at the festival alongside director Michel Franco and co-star Peter Sarsgaard on Oct. 1.

Jessica Chastain is continuing the press tour for new movie!

EXCLUSIVE: After showing her strong support for interim agreements while promoting her film Memory on the festival circuit, Jessica Chastain is backing that up with Dreams, which has received a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement last month. The Teorema pic reunites her with her Memory director Michel Franco and recently finished filming in San Francisco, where some 60 actors and 50 below-the-line crew members were employed for the shoot. Rupert Friend among those featured in the cast.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a proud brother-in-law right now!

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor It’s time for Peter Sarsgaard to finally shatter the Oscar glass. Once upon a time, actor Peter Sarsgaard won the most precursors prizes during the 2003-2004 awards season for his supporting turn in Billy Ray’s “Shattered Glass.” In the film, he plays Charles Lane, a newly promoted editor who suspects one of his revered writers (played by Hayden Christensen) could have fabricated some of his stories. It was a breakout performance in the early days of online Oscar punditry that had everyone buzzing.

Peter Sarsgaard and Cailee Spaeny were among the winners at the 2023 Venice Film Festival!

With three competition titles across the last four editions, no contemporary filmmaker has been more present on the Venice Lido than director Michel Franco. 

After just being officially confirmed for a SAG-AFTRA Interim Agreement the day before, the cast of Memory hit the Venice Film Festival red carpet Friday night. Michel Franco’s movie, starring Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, was greeted with a seven-minute ovation during its world premiere inside the Sala Grande.

Ellise Shafer Michel Franco’s heartbreaking drama “Memory” earned a strong eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival on Friday night as stars Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard wiped away tears. Franco, Chastain and Sarsgaard embraced as the audience cheered them on, with each taking their turn in the spotlight to accept the applause. After the crowd clapped for several minutes, Chastain was visibly emotional, dabbing at her eyes as she smiled with pride.

Jessica Chastain is looking stunning at the premiere of her new movie!

Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) lives behind an exceptionally well-locked door. Her apartment has three locks of different kinds, keeping out anyone who managed to get past the intercom protecting the front entrance. As a woman living alone with a teenage daughter, perhaps she has her reasons. Just tonight, a man followed her home from her high school reunion, catching the same train, shadowing her from the station and finally sleeping outside her building under a plastic bag. Strangely, she is quite blasé about that: In the morning, she deals with it, demanding this man’s phone and finding someone in his contacts who can come and pick him up.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “Memory” feels like the “Silver Linings Playbook” of Michel Franco’s career: an unexpectedly accessible romance between two damaged human beings, from an independent director who’s been known to put characters through some of life’s most punishing indignities. The previous film of Franco’s that it most resembles is “Chronic,” though the tough-love auteur spares us the bummer ending this time around. In that movie, he followed a hospice nurse through his rounds, then abruptly cut to black when the guy was sideswiped by a car.

It’s hard to encapsulate the cinema of a particular filmmaker in just one word, but if one were to try their hand at it with Mexican maverick Michel Franco, a word that’d come to mind is violence. The filmmaker’s work is built upon the looming expectation of violent transgression, society standing flimsy atop the fragile idea of cordiality.