8-year-old Maria lives with her mother, Cynthia, who is a
hoarder. Although Cynthia is loving and affectionate, their house is filthy and rat-infested, and Cynthia becomes upset if Maria doesn't save the day's rubbish and bring it home to her. Cynthia often repeats
aphorisms and rhymes, encouraging Maria to do the same, and describes her hoarded items as her and Maria's 'catalogue of love'. At Christmas, one of Cynthia's stacks of hoarded items collapses, severely injuring her. Maria is placed in foster care. Ten years later, in 1994, an 18-year-old Maria still lives with her foster mother, Michelle. Another of Michelle's former charges, the older Michael, comes to stay with them temporarily while he searches for a house with his girlfriend. Cynthia's ashes are delivered to Maria, the courier advising that cremated remains are only delivered within two weeks of death; meaning that Cynthia only recently passed. The same day, Maria's childhood best friend, Laraib, is forced by her family to move away due to rebellious behavior. Maria and Michael become close and form a strange, intense physical relationship, often playfighting and roughhousing. Michael's girlfriend visits one day, and Maria finds out she is pregnant. Her encounters with Michael continue to escalate, and Maria asks Michael to burn her stomach with an iron, something that happened to her as a child. Maria has recurring flashbacks to her life with Cynthia and hallucinates herself and Michael repeating Cynthia's rhymes. Maria begins to hoard garbage and increasingly neglects her physical hygiene. When she wanders outside during the night and comes home with chilblains, Michael tenderly cares for her, and they have sex. The next morning, Michael's girlfriend Leah visits; Maria discovers he proposed to her the day before. That night, Michael and Maria encounter a woman who has been seriously injured in a hit-and-run; she dies as Maria waits for Michael to get help, and Maria places coins over her eyes, walks away and climbs into a large rubbish bin. The next day, a barefoot, filthy Maria returns home. Locked in her room, which is revealed to be filled with hoarded trash, Maria imagines herself and Cynthia happy together in their house. Leah arrives to confront Michael, who has broken up with her via a voicemail. Michael breaks into Maria's room and begs her to love him, but Maria finally rejects him and Michelle, learning the truth of their relationship, asks him to leave. As Michael and Leah leave together, Maria gifts her with a trinket, advising her to never leave her daughter. Michelle helps Maria throw away her hoard, and Laraib returns home. On New Year's Eve, Maria sneaks into a tip, where she sits atop a pile of rubbish to watch fireworks. In a voiceover, she tells Cynthia she loves her and says the 'catalogue of love' has returned to her. ==Cast==