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Ma Mere,(Meine Mutter),(My Mother) (2004)

tomatometer

12

Average Rating: 3.7/10
Reviews Counted: 42
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 37

Pretentious, overly perverse and dull.

0

Average Rating: 3.3/10
Critic Reviews: 15
Fresh: 0 | Rotten: 15

Pretentious, overly perverse and dull.

audience

48

liked it
Average Rating: 3/5
User Ratings: 4,254

My Rating

Movie Info

An attractive widow finds her attentions turning to her teenage son in a troubling manner in this drama from France. Pierre (Louis Garrel) is a moody 17-year-old who is spending the summer with his parents at their summer home in the Canary Islands. While Pierre isn't especially close to his father (Philippe Duclos), he enjoys a warm relationship with his mother, Hélène (Isabelle Huppert) -- almost too warm, as her affection for him subtly strains the boundaries of typical familial behavior.

Oct 18, 2005

TLA Releasing

Cast

All Critics (49) | Top Critics (17) | Fresh (7) | Rotten (38) | DVD (10)

A self-satisfied, utterly hollow Bacchanal.

August 18, 2005 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune | Comment
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

110 minutes of Euro silliness mitigated only by the presence of Huppert and the striking ability of the actors to keep a straight face throughout this mess.

July 29, 2005 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comment
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Probably isn't for anyone not interested in the darkest corners of the human psyche, where sexual annihilation is the only response to a fallen world, where all moral bets are off, and where a boy's worst friend is his mother.

July 8, 2005 Full Review Source: Boston Globe | Comment
Boston Globe
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[The climax] involves such a disturbing blend of unhealthy mother-son affection and physical pain that it gives new meaning to the term child -- not to mention audience -- abuse.

July 7, 2005 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comment
Washington Post
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It could stand as Exhibit A for why French auteurs are a tough sell to the average seeker of entertainment.

July 1, 2005 Full Review Source: Toronto Star | Comment
Toronto Star
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The translation from the highly literary to the literalness of film isn't easy and too often, Ma Mère feels like a parody.

July 1, 2005 Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | Comment
Globe and Mail
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Eurotrash at its trashiest worst.

May 11, 2008 Full Review Source: Ozus' World Movie Reviews | Comment
Ozus' World Movie Reviews

Most of the screenplay consists of meandering and inebriated characters talking just as high-falutin'.

February 26, 2007 Full Review Source: Film Journal International | Comment
Film Journal International

Strictly for people who see French films solely for the promise of seeing Louis Garrel's penis.

October 17, 2005 Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | Comment
Slant Magazine

This sexually messy, religiously infused film is a perfect example of the dregs of European cinema.

August 11, 2005 Comment
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Glazed-over looks, naked flesh, inane philosophizing, and sand dunes announce that we're in Antonioni-land, circa Zabriskie Point.

July 31, 2005 Comment

Ma mère could easily be mistaken for the latest anhedonic embarrassment out of Canada

July 15, 2005 Full Review Source: Film Freak Central | Comment
Film Freak Central
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for Ma Mere,(Meine Mutter),(My Mother)

Aren´t Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel tired of playing always the same character/type of role?Aren´t french directors tired of the cheap well(badly)-known liberal sex French philosophy? Sickness and disgusting. Half star for the opening credits on the white background screen. That´s all

October 24, 2009
5oclockcoffee

Super Reviewer

European cinema at its best! Producer Paulo Branco has been producing some of the best films and best directors in Europe and this is one of the latest ones. Absolutely amazing, in depicting obsession, incest, dysfunction, love, selfishness, acceptation, pain... It's particularly brilliant how time and space is (not)

December 21, 2009
matertenebraum

Super Reviewer

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Foreign Titles

  • My Mother (Ma mere) (DE)
  • My Mother (Ma Mere) (UK)
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