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Critics Consensus: Pretentious, overly perverse and dull.
Critic Consensus: Pretentious, overly perverse and dull.
All Critics (42) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (37) | DVD (4)
A self-satisfied, utterly hollow Bacchanal.
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.
It could stand as Exhibit A for why French auteurs are a tough sell to the average seeker of entertainment.
The translation from the highly literary to the literalness of film isn't easy and too often, Ma Mère feels like a parody.
Eurotrash at its trashiest worst.
Most of the screenplay consists of meandering and inebriated characters talking just as high-falutin'.
This sexually messy, religiously infused film is a perfect example of the dregs of European cinema.
Glazed-over looks, naked flesh, inane philosophizing, and sand dunes announce that we're in Antonioni-land, circa Zabriskie Point.
Ma mère could easily be mistaken for the latest anhedonic embarrassment out of Canada
Ma Mere will have limited appeal, but I suspect it is a fair visual representation of Bataille's libertine philosophical notions.
Despite how flat it seems at first, this French film is so provocative and perverse that I'm afraid a lot of people won't get its point, and I love how it explores the vulnerability of Garrel's character through his constant nudity and overflowing sexual desire.
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) 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...
Pierre is the product of a very unconventional marriage. Both his parents lead promiscuous lives and he spends most of his childhood in a Catholic boarding school. Soon after he returns home, now a young man, his father dies and his mother, undeterred by her husband's death, draws her son into her perverse lifestyle. I'm not sure I'm open-minded enough to fully appreciate Ma Mere. It attempts to titillate by venturing into those dark places where most people feel VERY uncomfortable. If there is a moral to this story it's simply this: "Don't hump your mother". (Frankly, I didn't need an artsy French film to figure that out.)
[font=Century Gothic]"Ma Mere" starts out with Pierre(Louis Garrel) arriving at the vacation home of his parents in the Canary Islands. Soon after, his father has to return home to[/font] France on business where he is killed in an accident. Distraught, Pierre withdraws almost completely while his mother, Helene(Isabelle Huppert), hardly misses a beat. In fact, she gives him the key to his father's study before she heads out to party. Inside the study, Pierre finds a rather large stash of pornography. At first, he masturbates, then urinates all over it. Later, while he is nude sunbathing, Helene approaches him and tells him that it is time he got a first hand look at her hedonist ways, starting out with an introduction to her friend, Rea(Joana Preiss), who is even wilder than she is... "Ma Mere" is a sexually explicit and provocative movie about intimacy and sex, and how dissimilar they really are. Helene has sex in copious amounts, but it is intimacy and love that Pierre desperately needs.(Pierre was raised by his grandparents since apparently Helene is so carefree as to be incapable of raising a child.) And the scenic locations are very well photographed.
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