Memory (15)

A tightly wound drama sees excellent performances from Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard as a pair of flawed and damaged lovers. Sylvia is a recovering alcoholic who leads a simple, ordered life: her teenage daughter, her job as a social worker, AA meetings. After a school reunion, she is followed home by a man whose presence has unsettled her. Memory is the key: the man, Saul, is bewildered, experiencing a rare form of dementia, while Sylvia dredges long-suppressed secrets, not to mention her formidable mother, from out of her past. Can they connect against all the odds?

“It is about abuse, violence, recovery and the redemptive power of sexual intimacy, but also about just what its title proclaims: memory, and how this accumulates over a lifetime to form an identity.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian