My Mother (2004)

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A Major Disappointment

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

As a great admirer of Isabell Huppert and her ego-free attitude towards her profession it is sad to see her in such a snooze inducing piece of sleazy art house load of bullocks that this film turns out to be. Interesting enough is not even the idea that lacks any sense, it is the execution, Christopher Honore may not be the worst film director in the world but Haneke he's not. A controversial subject doesn't need to look ugly for audiences to connect on the contrary many directors already proved that point. Honore seems to disagree and as such created one of the most visually ugly films since Catherine Breillat's Romance. Poor choices in cinematography and editing adds confusion to the ugliness of it all. On the other hand Cheap philosophy wrapped in the most unerotic sex scenes since the birth of cinema makes this less exciting then watching 110 minutes of pure white on screen. The only things that saves it from a failure of epic proportions are the actors, but neither Huppert's Piano Teacher influenced performance nor unf inspiring ladies man Louis Garrel manage to give to its viewers the sense of fun and pleasure that they seem to been having on screen. In the end it tries to be what it is not and ends up being nothing but a silly film with a even sillier ending that is only there for reasons of massive plot contrivance.

This film left me in a state of shock. The film-makers may see that as a positive statement - that their film gave the desired effect of evoking extreme emotion. Unfortunately, the shock was due to how bad the film was. It goes without saying that the subject material is designed to be challenging: a teenage boy and his mother's incestuous relationship. This alone would be enough for many people to dislike the film. But let me say that I am very open when it comes to watching challenging films. I thought that "Spanking the monkey" (which focuses also on son/mother incest) was excellent, since it portrays the action in a way that blends serious emotional issues with very (black) black humour while giving good characterisation. "My mother" does none of this. It treats the incest as salacious, but with no way of allowing viewers to identify with the characters or try to understand their issues. What made this film bad is the total lack of realism. I am not talking about how unlikely it would be for people to do certain things, because although incest is rare, it does still exist. I am referring to the lack of realism regarding the characters, their actions and the script that they are forced to spill out. Throughout the whole movie I found myself saying "That's daft"/"They'd never do that"/"This is stupid" with almost every scene, to the point that it ended up being almost amusing, and yet "amusing" is the polar opposite of what this film is trying to impart.Spoilers!!!!!!!So, what is daft? The son finds some of his father's porno magazines, and decides to strew them all over the floor and then masturbate and urinate on them. The son has a loving relationship with the live-in servants, but he decides to kick them out of the house on a "hilarious" whim when he is drunk. She servants don't question it at all. Neither does the mother (whose house it is). We never hear from them again. A pretty young girl watches the son rape his mothers friend while he gazes at his mother, and yet she then falls in love with him. A final sex scene involves the mother cutting her own abdomen with a knife while the son smears his hand in it and masturbates. The final scene of the movie involves the son visiting the dead body of his mother and quickly begins masturbating over the casket.While none of the characters were by any means "normal", their general behaviour and backgrounds gave no reasoning for this ridiculous set of actions, which you end up watching with total disbelief. Some reviews have mentioned the good acting of Isabelle Huppert. I think she acted as well as she could have done under the circumstances. But it reminds me of the saying "You can't polish a turd!". If you want to watch a challenging movie, watch "Spanking the monkey". If you want to waste two hours of your life, watch "My Mother".

Usually the French are much better at tackling "taboo" subjects, but the way this film was done was AWFUL. I appreciate the works of Louis Garrel and Isabelle Huppert, which was the only draw for me to watch Ma Mère. I hadn't read the book the film was adapted from, but the hype was too much to ignore so I watched it. BAD CHOICE. Louis Garrel was decent, as decent as he could be in such an awful film. Isabelle Huppert's performance was not her best, a lot of long pauses and dramatic painful-staring-off-into-the-world stares that just got annoying after awhile. The film did a bad job at establishing the characters. At some parts, I felt as if the characters did things for no reason without ever providing much background to why they act that way and other characters just felt really unnecessary to the story. You leave the film feeling like you don't understand any of the characters, why they do the things they do, even worse you leave not feeling a single emotion of sympathy or hate or ANYTHING for the characters. I also found myself lost at a few parts due to two reasons. 1.) The way the movie was filmed was very distracting, as if someone with a hand-held home video camera kept zooming in and out of the actors faces and 2.) some shots were very dark which made it difficult to understand what was going on (especially at the end). I felt like the film strayed a bit from actually telling an unique story, and became more about nude shots and unusual sex scenes to seem more "daring" and "edgy." I didn't feel like I took anything from the film, or the point of the film. If you want to watch a good Christophe Honoré film, I would advise you to skip this and pick up Les Chansons d'Amour starring Garrel as well.

If you like French existentialist movies (which in this case is also a perverse "coming of age" movie), this is one of the better ones; if not, don't bother. The first half is slow and cumbersome with the scenes more like vignettes to reveal the Son's naiveté, while the Mother remains inaccessible until the very end. While the second half remains cumbersome through choppy editing, it is more interesting with the introduction of Hansi and Loulou. Most people seem to get hung up over the Libertine attitudes portrayed through deviant sexual activities, but what I took away was the idea that the psyche of willing participants, and particularly the young or immature, can be damaged by any emotionally charged experience, be it sexual or religious. The struggle is to rise above it. The one scene of particular interest revealed the blurred distinctions between dominant and submissive personalities (Hansi & Loulou), with the Sadist revealed as a Masochist by the emotional damage they were inflicting on themselves through the physical damage inflicted on someone they cared about. The Sadist/Masochist roles are easily reversed as seen through Loulou's comment when he throws himself in the pool in the deleted scene.