A day in the life of Leo (Javier Bardem) and his daughter, Molly (Elle Fanning) as she tries to shepherd her ailing father around Brooklyn to visit the dentist and the optician. Leo is suffering from dementia and as he flits in and out of the real world we see what are memories or alternate lives he could have led.

The first of these lives relates to his time in Mexico with his first love Delores (Salma Hayek) and the second to a time he spent in Greece when he ran away from his commitments as a father when Molly was born. It becomes clear that Delores did exist and was his first love and that he did run to Greece to write his book when he was overwhelmed by becoming a father. But whether the full extent of each memory actually happened is unclear. This ambiguity initially left me cold when the film closed but it has been on my mind ever since the film finished and I can not shake it. Something that I consider to be a good sign of a thoughtful film. Both of these alternate Leo’s are filled with grief and regret. Neither is a happy story. So why would his mind invent them and equally why would they return to those memories if they were so painful? The ending does ask a question of Molly that suggests her mind may be split by the ramifications of how her life would change depending on her decision as well suggesting that Leo had to make equally difficult choices.

Elle Fanning absolutely stands out as the best part of the film. Molly’s love for her father and the desperate way that she clings on to the possibility he is still inside the shell of the man she sees in front of her is a beauty to behold. Javier Bardem is also very good as the three different versions of himself, convincing as a grieving father, a selfish father and the shell we see for the majority of the film. Popping up elsewhere in very small roles are Salma Hayek and Laura Linney who make marks with their cameos.

Writer/Director Sally Potter clearly has a very personal story to tell. She has spoken in interviews of how her brother had a variant of early on set dementia and this must have been what compelled her to tell this story. Perhaps there is hope in her film that the loved ones that people have to grieve for even when they are physically still there are living some sort of internal life that we can not see. Although if that is the case I am not sure why the mind would torture itself as much as Leo’s does.