James White: DVD Review

James White: DVD Review

Rating: M
Released by Madman Home Ent

Financed via Kickstarter and brought to life when writer Josh Mond wanted to explore his feelings over his own mother's death, James White is clearly a labour of love for all involved.

White (played with rawness by Girls star Christopher Abbott) is a New Yorker, whose life is spiralling out of selfishness. But things change when his mother's cancer returns.

Intensely raw, and shot in close ups throughout, Mond manages to bring a claustrophobic intensity to the screen as he explores the story of self-destruction. Both Abbott and Sex and The City star Cynthia Nixon bring a degree of complexity to proceedings as White and his mother respectively.

You can't help but get swept up in proceedings, given the emotional levels mined here, and while the film has a universality that's likely to hit with more resonance for anyone who's ever been touched by cancer, the film's uncompromising and brisk approach to a sparsity of story-telling is to be applauded.