Rose Byrne stars as Linda, a psychotherapist who is struggling to cope with caring for her daughter who is suffering from an eating disorder. She has to be fed through a gastric feeding tube each night and eat enough during mealtimes to gain weight and recover. With her husband abroad for work reasons, being forced out of her apartment and into a budget hotel after a massive hole appears in her roof, the pressures mount until Linda is at breaking point. A combination of her bad choices on top of a near impossible situation and a lack of real support compound things further.
I defy anyone to claim to have enjoyed this drama, written and directed by Mary Bronstein. If I say that almost the only moment of light relief is when a hamster gets run over, you might understand how relentlessly intense this movie is. Byrne, though, is tremendous as the frazzled mother permanently in a mixture of panic and despair.
The rest of the cast is pretty good too, including Conan O’Brien as Linda’s ineffectual therapist and Danielle MacDonald as one of her patients who abandons her baby with Linda increasing her stress levels further. Christian Slater plays her mostly useless husband and ASAP Rocky is better than you might expect as her initially sympathetic neighbour.
Bronstein’s script builds the stress well, though I was not convinced by the ending with its ray of hope, based on what we have seen before.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10