The first feature film from Josh Mond is, naturally, an extension of his short film “1009”, also screened in this edition of Curtas Vila do Conde. If, in that short film, we see a man that suffers with previous memories, locked in an hotel room, on the feature film, that same man - it is even the same actor Christopher Abbott - wanders on a contemporary New York. It is as if the character has left the hotel room (from “1009”) to face the world. In this case, James affective landscape is suffering a rapid transformation: his father has just died and his mother (Gail White, interpreted by Cynthia Nixon, known by her role in “The Sex and the City”) is rapidly fading away due to cancer. The film starts precisely on a family meeting after the death of James father, in which he knows for the first time, his second wife. There is, since the beginning, an awkwardness on family relations that will reach its peak on the connection between mother and son: James has to care for his mother but his own life is turned upside down. He does not know how his future will be and just postpones important decisions. With those informations on the table, James decides to take a “break” in Mexico, where he believes he will get his head straight. In a way that is what happens, until his world shakes again: his mother sickness worsens. James will have to deal with the physical degradation of Gail and with an even likely future: her death. James unstable balance is constant, as his terrible loneliness in a big city. All that is left for him is the nightlife and the one night stands with women. Just his relationship with his mother holds him down, that as much of sweetness and of terrible dependency (for both). Josh Mond films all this drama with a camara stuck on James, almost not allowing the viewer to breathe and forcing him to enter on the characters emocional drift. Yet, there are revealing moments in which we can encounter a state of grace, even in the most terrifying situations, when mother and son share impossible dreams, seating in the bath room. It is there that “James White” has is great virtue: being a contemporary portrait of life and death and the tremendous effort that is necessary to keep us from drowning on a bubbling city. (DR)