It is sincere, and I think the split screen works a lot better than I thought.

For all its compassion, though, it’s still a gruelling work in its account of old age’s terrors.

A meaningful engagement with elder care, dementia and mortality, born of the director’s own experiences with his mother and his near-fatal brain haemorrhage.

The maverick director spares his audience none of the harrowing hopelessness facing an ageing couple in this small-scale but intense study.