[1] It tells the story of a young student who moves 600 kilometres (370 mi) away from his hometown to the capital to study, as he worries about his mother's problematic relationship with a new husband.

According to Järvi-Laturi, he was inspired by the 1986 news headline of Ilta-Sanomat: "The death of the one thrown into the sea was the revenge of the underworld".

Mika is about to go to Helsinki to study at the University of Technology, and Elli is buying an apartment for her son in the Merihaka district.

However, Kurkela's possible tendency to engage in intimate domestic violence causes Mika's everyday life to be disrupted and he has to worry about the well-being of his mother in his childhood home, as well as his own future in the capital with his studies and Ulla.

[2] Janet Maslin from The New York Times found the film "sordid and solidly unglamorous, the acting performances more opaque than the situation warrants and the ending surprising but an unrevealing one.