Everybody has to know that NOBODY HAS TO KNOW is about knowing and not knowing.

Amnesia brought on by a stroke opens Phil, a Belgian migrant working in a remote Scottish rural post, to spectacular revelation.

Apparently he was lover to Millie, the spinster daughter of the man whose farm he worked.

The affair was a secret according to Millie, nobody had to know. But now that Phil has no memory of their tryst and Millie has to remind him. He of all people has to know.

And so new memories are seeded. But were there old memories to forget? Is Millie guilty of amnesiac abuse?

Everybody has to know that NOBODY HAS TO KNOW is a gentle, un-peeling but very appealing, little film of conjugal love between mature people set against a rugged beauty and amidst a conservative community.

Written, directed and starring as Phil, Bouli Lanners embraces the ordinary to create something extraordinary, managing to make forgetting into something memorable.

Michelle Fairley plays Millie, a formidable flinty performance that is nonetheless shaded in subtle hues. The chemistry with Lanners bubbles in the beaker, a simmering passion rather a boil over, comfy as a Fair Isle cardigan.

A quirky supporting cast led by Julian Glover as Angus, Millie’s father and Phil’s employer, the taciturn patriarch of the paddock and monarch of the glen.

The location is part of the narrative, a place of solitude but also community, a place of tradition where history is honoured, but open to foreigners like Phil who have similar values but necessarily the same philosophies. It is a canvas on which the past can be recast, via the positive palette of the present.

Against Hollywood blockbusters taking up screen space, NOBODY HAS TO KNOW could live up to its title. Let’s hope nobody allows that to happen.