Struggling against raising her young teenager son, Daniel, a young beautiful single mother, who after the death of her husband, struggles against raising her teenager guy, who is so violent and she can't deal with him, so when she receives a help from her neighbor, everything changes.
Dolan is able to weave dialogue, camerawork, a fluid yet urgent editing style, and a magpie's ear for pop music into a cinematic world that you can almost hold in your hand before it starts spilling over.
A story of the combative relationship between a mother and her son filled with delirious swells of effusive love and sudden plummets into madness and hate.
It's perhaps a never-seen-before technical stunt that's deeply intriguing, seriously cinematic and impossible to discuss without giving it all away.
Moira MacDonald
Seattle Times
February 05, 2015
The movie's overlong, underpopulated and often devastating to watch. But it's told with an uncanny realism, and when it's over you feel shaken and a little sick - and realize that you can finally exhale.
Richard Brody
New Yorker
February 02, 2015
Mother and son gesticulate wildly but remain undefined; Dolan's blandly showy aesthetic matches the vainly hectic action.
I suppose the relationship is Oedipal or primal or something or other, but mostly it's just an excuse for Dolan to stage a series of gaudy shout-fests.
