MEMORY TBC

Classy reunion…

★★★★★ OUT 23 FEBRUARY CINEMAS

Awoman who can’t forget meets a man who can’t remember in a thorny drama that’s bleak, sad and hopeful in equal measure. Both a showcase for two superb performances and a complex meditation on how the past shapes the present, Michel Franco’s film is also a romance in which two damaged souls forge an unlikely connection.

Care worker Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is a recovering alcoholic whose life revolves around her job, her sobriety and her daughter, Anna (Brooke Timber). When a school reunion ends with a fellow attendee following her home, her well-ordered existence gets disconcertingly disrupted.

The follower in question is Saul (Peter Sarsgaard), a widower with early-onset dementia who may or may not be one of the classmates who assaulted her as a teenager. An offer from Saul’s niece (Eighth Grade’s Elsie Fisher) to step in as his carer might be a chance for Sylvia to exact retribution – if only she could be as sure of her recollections as Saul is as shorn of his.

Chastain and Sarsgaard make a riveting duo in a film that is in no great hurry to elucidate its mysteries. An electrifying late confrontation between Sylvia and her estranged mother (Jessica Harper) offers a degree of clarity, however, while the ending contains a glimmer of hard-won optimism.

Jessica Chastain gives a typically committed performance

THE VERDICT A tough and draining watch that’s worth enduring for its well-matched leads’ compelling star turns.

THE PROMISED LAND 15

There will be spuds…

★★★★★ OUT 16 FEBRUARY CINEMAS

Headlined by Mads Mikkelsen, this Nordic frontier western sees filmmaker Nikolaj Arcel return to his native Denmark to put a firm stake in the ground following his disappointing 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower.

In 1755, retired captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mikkelsen) is seeking to tame the wild heath of Jutland by cultivating a crop of potatoes. He’s honouring the king’s desires, but local landowner Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg), a drunk and a sadist, insists that Kahlen is trespassing. A brutal battle of wills unfolds, punctuated by callous violence.

Superbly played by the leads, this savage indictment of class, racial prejudice and male pride is grounded by the more practical needs of two women: Edel (Kristine Kujath Thorp), the cousin of de Schinkel who’s expected to marry the bratty tyrant, and Ann Barbara (Amanda Collin), who’s escaped his cruel ownership and now tends to Kahlen’s house. Also key is Anmai Mus (Melina Hagberg), a Roma girl who forges a makeshift family with Ludvig and Ann.

Absorbing throughout, The Promised Land (or The Bastard, as the Danish title translates) manages to successfully sprout some rousing entertainment – delicious boo-hiss villainy and a love-triangle subplot – from an earthy drama that’s as handsome and merciless as the landscapes in which it’s rooted.

THE VERDICT This rip-roaring historical drama is the best film about growing potatoes since The Martian.