Blockbuster sequel breaks box office record for a September opening

It is rare to encounter something this confident, this fully realised, that does not seem to be trying to impress you. It simply is what it is, and trusts you to meet it there.

Whether it finds the audience it deserves is another matter. But those who do find it will, I suspect, hold on to it for a long time.

Nothing is wasted. Every shot, every line, every silence is doing something

It begins quietly, almost apologetically, and for the first 20 minutes you may wonder whether anything is going to happen at all. Then something does, and from that point on it is impossible to look away.

What makes it remarkable is not the plot, which could be summarised in a sentence, but the precision with which every element has been arranged. Nothing is wasted. Every shot, every line, every silence is doing something.

A singular vision

The central performance is a marvel of restraint. There are no big speeches, no obvious moments of catharsis, just a slow accumulation of small choices that, by the end, has become almost unbearably moving.

"I wanted it to feel like a memory," the director told me when we met in a cafe near the festival venue. "Not a story somebody is telling you, but something you half remember happening to you."

There are flaws, of course. The middle section sags slightly, and a subplot involving a neighbour is introduced with some care and then simply abandoned. But these are quibbles about a work that is, in every important respect, alive.