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.
When Pierre's father dies unexpectedly in an auto accident, his emotional dependence on Hélène grows, while her desire for her son does the same. Though Pierre finds himself attracted to several girls his own age summering on the island, he finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile his curiosity with the growing sexual tension between mother and son. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
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.
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.
[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.
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
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)
presented.The ending is terrific and the perfect conclusion to the story. Absolutely superb, a film I think only French could have the audacity to do... I hope European Cinema gets more protection so that we can keep watching these master pieces, otherwise we'll just have to stay dumb watching the main pop corn stream...
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