Welcome to the Rileys

A film that begins in Indiana. Doug and Lois lost their daughter eight years ago. An accident. Since that day she has not left the house. Not even into the garden. Doug runs a plumbing business. He has been seeing a woman, and she dies too. He goes to New Orleans on business. He goes into a club there. Mallory is sixteen. She works at the club and is looking for customers. Doug takes her to a room and does nothing. Then he sees where she lives. The house is filthy and she cannot pay the rent. From there the film is a story of staying. Doug decides to stay there. He cleans her house. He pays the rent. He sets rules. He telephones his wife. He says he is not coming back and does not explain why. Mallory does not understand it. She keeps trying to work out what he wants and looking for the exchange. There is no exchange. Lois leaves the house. For the first time in eight years she gets into a car and drives to New Orleans. What the narrative is interested in is not rescue but substitution: its idea is that the man puts this girl in his daughter's place, and that she sees it and stays anyway. The narrative never draws the relationship into a sexual frame and states that plainly. When Lois arrives the three are in the same house. She cuts the girl's hair and that scene is the film's centre. The ending offers no overstated resolution. Nobody is healed and nobody is saved. Kristen Stewart plays the part hard; the character is coarse, aggressive and never likeable. James Gandolfini holds the same measure. The film screened at Sundance and stayed small commercially. Jake Scott directed. Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Joe Chrest are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes quiet American independent drama and performance-centred films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for novelty; the narrative takes a known shape and the middle section repeats itself.