Ma mère

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...

I can enjoy sexy French movies as much as the next person. But this movie is simply gross, to the point of being almost comical. Its furthest excesses rival in bawdiness the kinds of high jinks you'd expect to see in a Farrelly Brothers movie, but without the jokes. Quite the opposite, this film is pretty dark. It could have been a brooding, beautifully shot, and deeply literary meditation on the tangled emotions, Freudian and otherwise, that run through families. Especially considering Isabelle Huppert, who I'd think I could enjoy watching do almost anything, maybe even eat a live horse or perform an emergency tracheotomy, her beauty and her abilities being so complex, limitless and profound. But I did have trouble watching her do the things she does here -- where the artfulness present in other parts of the movie is left behind and only absurdity remains. Perhaps I'm just a prude.

Ma Mère vs Youporn (or any other of more than a 100 porn channels) looses 0 to 100. All other porn channels have 1. Steady cameras 2. Focused 3. MUCH prettier females 4. Apparently masculine males 5. MORE stimulating scenes 6. They are shorter 7. Last but not least, they have more interesting dialogues.

My rate is -273. Absolute zero.

Isabelle Huppert is one of the greatest and boldest actresses there is, unafraid of any role she's given. Unfortunately that sometimes means she's given parts that are, quite frankly, beneath her. Her role in Christophe Honore's screen version of Georges Bataille's novel "Ma Mere" is one of them. She plays a hedonistic woman who, after the death of her husband, initiates her adoring young son in her lifestyle. She attacks the part gamely enough as does a frequently nude young Louis Garrel as the son but the film is mostly unpleasant and shallow. It's like a porn movie with the pretensions of seriousness, as if all sex is just a cover for something more profound rather than as an end in itself. Ultimately it reminded of seventies Europorn and it leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.

There are some that put this film in their Top Ten list for 2005, but I greatly hesitate to list it along with films such as 2046 and A History of Violence.

It is a women's film. By that, I do not mean you will see it on Lifetime, but it stars women who are in full control of their sexuality. It celebrates that sexuality like no film I have seen.

Christophe Honoré (Love Songs) adapted an unfinished Georges Bataille novel and directed this film starring Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher, The Bedroom Window, The School of Flesh, I Heart Huckabees) as a mother who has a child to raise after the untimely death of his father.

Pierre (Louis Garrel) has spent his time in a religious boarding school, so mom enlists the aid of her friends to expose his to her debauched lifestyle. Rea (Joana Preiss) and Hansi (Emma de Caunes - The Science of Sleep) do their best to erase all that religious training exposing him to not only regular sex, but some sadism as well.

The Elle Magazine fans who voted Louis Garrel one of their 15 Sexiest Men this year will not be disappointed at all at what they see. The rest, who are more interested in Isabell, Emma, and Joana will also be very pleased.

I am sure we all wish we had a mom like Hélène.