Director: Michel Franco

Stars: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Brooke Timber, Josh Charles

Writer-director Franco’s film is a touching story of two troubled souls finding a connection.

Chastain is Sylvia, a care home employee. A single mother and recovering alcoholic Sylvia broadly avoids socialising and lives in a small Brooklyn apartment with her teenage daughter Sara (Timber) with whom she has a fairly good relationship. Sylvia’s overprotectiveness toward her daughter however hints at a troubled history. In an early scene more redolent of a horror film, she reluctantly attends a high school reunion and leaving early she is followed home by a man. He is Saul (Sarsgaard) a middle-class widower who has dementia and lives in the leafy suburbs with his brother. Gradually, the oddly-matched duo – she is trying to forget her past; he is trying to recall his – grow close.

This is an austere piece which eschews the kind of melodramatic emoting this kind of subject matter normally attracts. It features no score other than repeated appearances of Procul Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ deployed by Saul as an anchor to his past, while Yves Cape’s cinematography is muted and autumnal. Possibly too dour for some tastes, but the leads are engaging and empathetic, particularly Sarsgaard who imbues Saul with a vulnerable courteous manner coupled with a twinkly mischievousness.

Memory is released 23rd February

David Willoughby

Follow David on Twitter @DWill_Crackfilm