“Echo Valley,” a heartbreaking thriller about a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship

Moving hay bales, repairing paddocks, taking care of horses between riding lessons: Kate's (Julianne Moore) days are busy. The heroine of Echo Valley lives on this small Pennsylvania ranch, which gives its title to the film, released June 13 on Apple TV+. As the San Francisco Chronicle notes , since losing her wife in an accident, Kate has had to run the farm alone. “A life of poorly paid, painful, and lonely labor, until the sudden return one evening of her daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), all sugar and honey, who swears she's kicked her addictions. And who mentions, in passing, that she (still) needs money.” Because she has to settle a dispute with her boyfriend, the brutal Ryan (Edmund Donovan) – who owes a large sum to the poisonous drug dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson).

The relationship, in which tenderness alternates with conflict, between mother and daughter from a first marriage, is at the heart of Michael Pearce's feature film. Kate refuses, for once, to give Claire money, because she suspects her of wanting to spend it on drugs. After a