Young Elliot (Alex Lawther, THE IMITATION GAME) is dragged to the French countryside to help his mother Beatrice (Juliet Stevenson, DROWNING BY NUMBERS) close up their vacation house when she divorces husband Philip (Finbar Lynch, THE NUMBERS STATION). Closely watched by his mother and living in a cloistered state of semi-arrested development, Elliot only just starts experiencing the stirrings of sexual attraction when he spies fellow youth Clément (Phénix Brossard, CHOCOLAT) swimming in the lake bordering their property. The two bond surprisingly over the limitations of their mothers - Clément having been sent from Paris to stay with his mechanic uncle in the village when his mother's brain cancer took a turn for the worst and Elliot just now starting to see his mother's erratic behavior as something more serious than frayed emotions - but Elliot is unsure if Clément returns his attraction if he even knew how to express it. Not so much a coming of age tale as a meditative examination of repressed and stifled emotions and desires. This is not a film about peoples' better natures. Beatrice cannot help but wallow yet knows that she is emotionally neglecting her son, Philip tries to convey to his son his marital frustrations by framing them as the things Beatrice had to sacrifice in the marriage, and Beatrice returns Elliot's admission of concealing something hurtful from his father with a similar admission that makes it seem more like a deliberate exclusion of her husband from an aspect of her son's life. The film is full of painterly imagery with director Andrew Steggall cheekily lulling the viewer to slowly take in some compositions before realizing just what Elliot is doing just below the frame. A slick feature debut that could have used a sterner hand in the editing.