Speak, Memory

A disorienting close-up on a mind that’s beginning to fray.

- Alison Willmore

ANTHONY (ANTHONY HOPKINS) has come unstuck in time. He can never seem to find his watch, and he suspects that someone has taken it—maybe one of the women hired to be his caregivers or the man he encounters in the living room who claims to be married to his daughter. Inevitably, it turns out to be in the bathroom, where he has always hidden his valuables, a habit that’s not nearly as secret as he seems to think it is. Anthony’s desire to enforce order on the day is countered by the way that the hours keep slipping by him; he’ll still be in his pajamas when he finds himself being asked to sit down to dinner. His daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), will tell him things, like that she’s met someone and that she’s going to Paris to be with him. But when he brings the move up later, she has no idea what he’s talking about. More frighteningly, sometimes she looks like another person entirely (and is played by another, Olivia Williams) who still calls him “Dad” and wants to know why he’s looking at her that way. All he can do is mutter about how there’s something funny going on, a comment that does little to capture the scope of his disorientation.