Sadie Coles Gallery

A film about an ailing old man and a young mother. After retiring from the factory, the man, deprived of his daily routine, loses control over his time. Unable to eat or sleep, he starts drying up. The mother and child are like a single organism. Yet their relationship is, for all its closeness, one of dependence and inequality. The child, whose attachment to life is the strongest, is ravenous and needy; the woman, though enjoying a brief moment of freedom, is doomed to be a victim, while the old man has nothing to keep him going now that he can no longer work at the factory. When the three of them try to have a life together, they are like the Holy Family reversed. Brought together by chance, their lives intertwine in a web of oppression. The film follows their daily existence and slow decline.