“They’ll bury him in a hole and we won’t see him again?” says doe-eyed child Theo (Eamon Patrick O’Connell). Theo’s parents are asking him if he understands what the neighbours’ son dying in a tragic accident means.
Soon, he will be at the open casket funeral, causing a scene when he looks down and sees one of his toys adorning the body. As it transpires, however, it is the parents who are most driven to madness.We are in prettily-rendered 1960s suburbia. Anne Hathaway is Celine, the mother of the dead child, Max, while next door lives Jessica Chastain’s Alice (they both have husbands who are largely superfluous breadwinners).
