A good-natured adolescent struggles to find himself as his controlling mother attempts to bind him with her love in director Martial Fougerons emotionally claustrophobic family drama. Julien (Victor Sévaux) is a handsome and smart young man who would make any mother proud. Though he may be fairly bright, nothing Julien does can quite meet up to the expectations and lofty demands of his overbearing mother (Nathalie Baye), who seems to take strange pleasure in humiliating her son and placing him in severely awkward situations. It is because of her that Julien is forced to arrange clandestine meetings with his secret girlfriend while taking piano lessons from his kindly grandmother (Emmanuelle Riva). Though his sympathetic sister, Suzanne (Marie Kremer), and academic father (Olivier Gourmet) are quick to recognize the psychological damage that the bullying mother is inflicting upon her son, both are loathe to intercede lest they too become the target of the quick-to-anger suburban tyrant. His situation growing increasingly dire as his mothers demands take on a particularly dark bent, Julien is soon forced to resort to extreme measures as a means of dealing with the overbearing matriarch.~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide