Starring Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel. Written and directed by Christophe Honoré. (STC) 108 min. Opens July 1.
If you see only one film this year, for the love of god don't make it Ma Mère. People who see only one film per year are so not the target audience for this unholy slice of depravity. Ma Mère
is for viewers who've seen it all, are bored of it all and don't mind
being taken on a side trip through hell to get to where it all makes
sense. There is a cathartic pleasure in seeing a film about a hot mom
initiating her son into her world of slutty, degrading sex. It's just
not the kind of pleasure you might expect.
When 17-year-old Pierre (Louis Garrel from Bertolucci's The Dreamers)
arrives at his parents' summer home in the Canary Islands, what follows
will take him three lifetimes of therapy to get over. First, his dad
dies. Then his mom (Isabelle Huppert, skinny and creepily good) reacts
to the news like a cat reacts to a hairball, and decides it's time for
Pierre to start accompanying her and her gal pal (Joana Preiss) on
their all-night sexual odysseys. Lest you get turned on here, be warned
there's little that's sexy about all the sex in this film.
But there is a lot that's ballsy and compelling.
Writer-director Christophe Honoré, working from the Georges Bataille
novel published in 1966, occasionally reveals his characters for the
preposterous nutbars they are, but most of the time keeps things
mesmerizingly matter-of-fact. There's enough psychological nuance in
this film to make it worth going along for the ride and deciding its
meaning for yourself. At the very least, you won't complain about your
own mother again.