My Mother (2004)

Everybody in this film is a nut job...but not in a 'cool, interesting' kinda way, in a 'trying to hard to be crazy for attention purposes' fashion. The story is ridiculous and the scenarios are just utterly boring. It seems disjointed, perhaps intentionally, but combined with the fact that there is no opportunity to build any kind of empathy with any of the characters there is nothing to engage the viewer's interest. It's clear from the cover and the first few scenes what the big shocker is, and when it happens (or any other sex scene for that matter) it's just dishwater dull. If you have the opportunity to watch this, don't. I have nothing more to say about this tripe but IMDb is insisting on another two lines in the review, so here they are.

This is a movie which I saw two years ago (I am a man) with a woman who suggested we'd watch it while in intimate circumstances. As I do not intend nor feel the need to give details, I will only say I did not see that French girl again. I hardly watched it; just remembered Isabelle Huppert was in the cast.My curiosity -or boredom- was strong last night, and I rented it to see what I'd missed. As I don't understand French I could not even have a gist of what the plot was, but I could last night: a very poor attempt to glamorise perversion and diss catholicism. I am a little bit of a pervert and a feeble religious observant, so I may not be accused of being biased or discriminating European art films.Now I know why I did not feel the need to call her again.

Sure its got a decent cast, but I need a heck of a lot more than gratuitous BDSM behavior to keep my interest. In fact, I found the film distasteful. If you're into degrading sexual behavior, this one's for you. I don't need it to get off.I suppose its titillating for some and an opportunity to look into a world most of us don't inhabit. On the other hand, most of us don't inhabit that world because it is quite dehumanizing.Its not full of leather and bondage, don't get me wrong, but the relationships and outlook portrayed are an attempt at legitimizing something that its participants would like to rationalize as "just another acceptable way of doing their own thing".

I enjoyed the film so much I read the book. The book itself is unfinished and has two snippets at the very end that are disconnected from the rest of the work. It must have been very difficult to write a feature-length screenplay from this book. Not only is the book relatively short (200 pages about the size of a standard paperback with relatively large type), but there's very little "action." The book is all from Pierre's point of view, obviously (the title Ma Mère means My Mother), and it's mostly what he thinks about situations. The only characters in the book are the father, Pierre, Hélène, Réa, Hansi, and Loulou. (The grandparents are mentioned, just as they are in the film.) While the book addresses homosexuality, it only looks at the lesbian side of things because in the book Loulou is a woman. Nearly all the book content made it into the film, but there's much of the film that isn't part of the novel.