I liked this ambiguous adaptation of Julian Barnes’s Booker Prize-winning novel directed by Rikesh Batra. Curmudgeonly Tony Webster (an excellent job by the wonderful Jim Broadbent), curt, distant and formal, receives word of a bequest from the mother of an old flame, the diary of another old, deceased friend, and it sparks a host of memories and confusions. He tries to work these out with his ex-wife, his pregnant daughter, and, eventually, his former girlfriend played by a very distant and flat Charlotte Rampling. The film is very much about memory, true and false, and how we construct and reconstruct our past selves over time, sometimes truthfully, sometimes falsely, sometimes with understanding, sometimes without, sometimes with courage and openness, and sometimes with a false closure we use to protect ourselves. It goes back and forth in time, places old Tony where young Tony was to relive experiences, and lets us see the older man’s struggles to accept his young self and understand the present. There are few joyful moments in this small and intimate film, but it was very satisfying to me and I found both the confusions it exposed and forced Tony to confront and those it left unresolved personally meaningful. We reinvent ourselves as we go through our lives in this way. Small steps truly matter and my biggest concern here is that the changes may in fact be too great. In any event, all the supporting actors were excellent. The adaptation by Nick Payne doesn’t cleave strictly to the book in narrative, character, or text but it does in fundamental point of view and resolution, and Barnes was apparently fine with this