“You don’t tell a boy that’s been left behind at Christmas that you’re aching to cut him loose. That nobody wants him.”
That’s what Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), a cafeteria manager at the fictional Barton Academy and the grieving mother of a recently killed son, declares in Alexander Payne’s excellent new film, The Holdovers.
Luis Parrales is an assistant editor at The Atlantic. He was previously an associate editor for arts and culture at The Dispatch.
