The plot focuses on an unhappy overweight cook (Vince) whose life is changed after an enchanting college drop-out (Tyler) begins working as a waitress at his and his mother's roadside tavern.

Mangold wrote the screenplay for Heavy while attending filmmaking seminars at Columbia University and partly based it on real people he knew while growing up in Upstate New York.

Heavy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize and was later screened at Cannes where it competed for the Caméra d'Or.

In rural Upstate New York, 30-something Victor Modino works as a cook at Pete and Dolly's, a small roadhouse founded by and named after his now-deceased father and elderly mother.

Dolly, who is in poor health, spends her days sitting in a chair in the back of the kitchen, reminiscing about her late husband Pete and antagonizing Delores, a cynical longtime employee who once had an affair with him.

The daily rhythm of the restaurant is disrupted when Dolly hires a new waitress, Callie, a soft-spoken young woman who has just dropped out of college in Syracuse.

He stops binge eating, starts cleaning up the kitchen which he has neglected, and even musters the confidence to chat with Darlene, an attractive cashier at the local grocery market who also shows an interest in him.

Evan Dando of The Lemonheads was cast as Tyler's guitarist boyfriend because of Mangold's admiration for his music and in hopes of bringing some star attention to the low-budget production.

[16] Distributor Cinépix Film Properties released Heavy theatrically in the United States after Liv Tyler had received recognition for her starring role in Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty (1996).

"[19] Jay Carr of The Boston Globe praised the film as a "small gem [that] specifies a world and populates it with unerring authority and a sure instinct for character.

"[20] The Statesman Journal's Ron Cowan similarly lauded the film for its deliberate lack of dialogue, stating that Mangold "often eschews" it, "detailing his story with gestures, glances, and touches.

"[21] Barbara Creed of the Australian publication The Age noted the film as a "delicate and remarkable debut" and likened elements of it to the Carson McCullers novel The Ballad of the Sad Café.

[22] Critic James Berardinelli wrote that "Mangold captures the nuances of life perfectly, and, by never cheapening his vision through facile resolutions, he fashions a memorable cinematic portrait.

[24] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a small, quiet miracle of a movie in which tenderness, compassion, and insight combine to create a tension that yields a quality of perception that's almost painful to experience", comparing its cinematography to the work of R.W.

"[26] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune felt its portrayal of its characters was exploitative, noting: "Instead of the poetry of common people, Heavy romanticizes the mundane or grotesque.

Mangold seems to be trying to revive some of the emotional quality of the late '40s-early '50s work of Southern Gothic writers like Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams.

The website's critics consensus reads, "With Pruitt Taylor Vince's naturalistic performance and sympathetic direction from James Mangold, Heavy soars as an affecting exploration of loneliness.