The battle lines of territorial masculinity are drawn with compelling psychological complexity in Summer White, in which a 13-year-old boy impatient to become a man grows increasingly hostile to the presence of his single mother's new partner in their lives. Mexican director Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson establishes a domestic situation of almost unhealthy mutual emotional dependency and then ruptures it with the arrival of an outsider whose kindness and generosity make him even more of a threat.