The Sense of an Ending

Running time: 108 mins

The impeccable Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter) and Charlotte Rampling (Melancholia) team up in this mesmerizing tale about memory, jealousy, and the lies we tell ourselves to survive. As a follow up to his enchanting first film, The Lunchbox, director Ritesh Batra has turned for inspiration to Julian Barnes's Booker-prize winning novel. Tony, played by the phenomenal Jim Broadbent, is a curt, semi-retired divorcee who has led a life designed to shield him from pain and loss-and from deep feeling. But his sense of his own history is challenged when he is bequeathed a diary written by his best friend Adrian, who died under mysterious circumstances. The diary is in the possession of Tony's first love, Veronica (Rampling). But she refuses to give it to him. Why? Superbly acted, Batra's moving, impeccably crafted film casts a subtle and suspenseful spell as the increasingly obsessed Tony explains his predicament…to his not particularly sympathetic ex-wife. In doing so, he is compelled to revisit a past he had tidied away a little too conveniently. - Excerpts from Palm Springs Film Festival