Viewer Advice: Contains themes of child sexual abuse.

Jessica Chastain and Venice Best Actor winner Peter Sarsgaard are exceptional in this dark and difficult love story – the warmest, most optimistic film of director Michel Franco’s career.

Overprotective single mother and recovering alcoholic Sylvia is startled when former classmate Saul follows her home from their school reunion. When she finds him still outside her building the next morning, confused and disoriented, her professional instincts kick in: Sylvia is a social worker and Saul, it turns out, has early-onset dementia. He’s also connected to Sylvia’s past wounds – still fresh in her mind; absent from his – and when the professional becomes personal, both find themselves caught out by the slipperiness of memory.

Mexican formalist Franco’s latest film is buoyant and redemptive – arguably his most hopeful and compassionate yet. It still bears his signatures (including detached, static long shots and depictions of individual and familial dysfunction), but in its exploration of trauma, recovery and identity, Memory finds a genuinely sweet spot that is elevated by the exquisite performances of Chastain and Sarsgaard.

“Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard are riveting … bringing enormous pathos to the mix of caution and need with which they navigate their tentative bond.” – Hollywood Reporter