James White

Mess. That's precisely the word that best describes the life and times of James White (brilliant role by Christopher Abbott). White is constantly redlining his life, one party after another, getting into arguments and fights. He tries to get away and rest, find a job, but nothing works out. He's furious. He's gloomy. He's lost. White's family only multiplies his frustrations: his father died, his mother is deathly ill and soon slated to join her husband. White's portrait is equally intimate as it is energetic; the camera hovers constantly close to a pale, perspiring, unshaven face that is screwed up from either panic or childish amusement. Loosely related episodes portray new eruptions and reckonings with reality, which feed James White its raw emotional force. Mond has made a genuine tearjerker, writes Eric Kohn for IndieWire.