‘The Sense of Ending,’ had its world premiere as the opening film for the Palm Springs International
Just as a severe storm was approaching the Palm Springs area, the Palm Springs International Film Festival kicked off its film festival with “The Sense of Ending,” as its opening film on January 5, 2017. Attending the screening was the film’s director Ritesh Batra, producer David Thompson and artistic director Ben Browning. Palm Springs mayor Robert Moon and festival director Harold Matzner were also on hand for the festivities.
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, The Sense of an Ending, a mesmerizing and slippery tale of aging, memory and self-delusion.
Tony, played by the great 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 killed himself under mysterious circumstances. The diary is in the possession of Tony's first love, Veronica (Charlotte 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 - and long-glossed over formative experiences - to his not particularly sympathetic ex-wife (Harriet Walter). In doing so, he is compelled to revisit a past he had tidied away a little too conveniently.
“The Sense of Ending,” is slated to hit theaters on March 10, 2017.
Photographs from the world premiere:
