Spanking the Monkey

This film tends to reject the Hollywood made-for-TV oedipus complex (which is usually only expressed in undertones) scenario of a youth beset with confusion over his seemingly unhealthy relationship with his mentally ill mother, and his need to have a uncomplicated non-incestous relationship with Miss American Apple Pie. What we're presented with is a story of an independant young man who has dedicated himself to being unfettered by his emotionally distant, overzealous parents.

When his mother suffers a badly broken leg, he is called upon to take full responsibility for her care thru her entire recuperation. Very reluctantly, he is forced to acknowledge their authority yet again. He is immediately confronted with her immasculating condensations, but is unnerved by her very uninhibited demenor when under the influence of her prescribed pain-killers.

When me and my friend saw this, we were somewhat uncomfortable with the realistic candor of the actors portraying the mother and son. I can say this film, unlike any other I've seen elicits the nervous humor response far more effectively, and truly makes this worth seeing.

The title "Spanking the Monkey" derives from an American slang expression for masturbation. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals will doubtless be relieved to learn that no monkeys were spanked during the making of the film.

The Wikipedia entry for the film describes it as a "black comedy", which surprised me. There is little that is comic, even blackly comic, about it. It is rather one of those independent dramas about bickering, self-tormenting, dysfunctional American families. (See also "Lymelife", "Margot at the Wedding", "The Lifeguard" and many others). The main character is Ray Aibelli, a young man in his early twenties. He is a medical student who has just finished his first year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been offered an internship with the Surgeon General's department, a much sought-after appointment, but has had to turn it down, at his father's insistence, to look after his mother who has broken her leg.

Ray has a difficult relationship with his father, Tom, a travelling salesman whose job means he is often away from home. He has little sympathy with Ray's academic aspirations or his choice of medicine as a career and resents having to pay his college fees. Tom's relationship with his wife Susan is equally difficult, and he takes advantage of his frequent absences on business trips to cheat on her with prostitutes.

Ray's relationship with his mother is closer, although he is unhappy about being unable to take up his internship. There is little to do in the small town where he lives. He tries to get in touch with old friends from school, but finds that they are childish and immature with little in common with him. He dates a local teenager, Toni, but she is too young for him and their affair does not get very far. And then comes the development which has made this film notorious. A sexual attraction grows up between Ray and Susan and they have an incestuous relationship.

Some will find the very idea of a film about incest distasteful. This is not just because incest is widely regarded as immoral and is illegal in many countries. There are many other illegal or immoral human activities which do not evoke the same reaction. Murder, for example, is almost universally condemned as the most heinous of all crimes, but there are a vast number of films which involve at least one deliberate killing compared to the very few about incest. It is as if the cultural taboo against incest extended to writing, talking or even thinking about it, whereas we are perfectly free to write, talk or think about murder provided that we do not commit it.

Despite this cultural taboo, there have been some very good films on the subject. The two I am particularly thinking about are Louis Malle's "Le Souffle au Coeur" and Bertolucci's "La Luna", both of which, like "Spanking the Monkey", dealt with mother/son incest. I would not rate David O. Russell's film as highly as either of those, but it does have its points of interest. There are no major stars in it, which is not surprising; even in 1994 a Hollywood big name would not have got out of bed, much less signed up to do a movie, for $200,000, which was the film's entire budget. Nevertheless, you don't always need big names to make a well-acted movie.

All three of the main roles are well played. Benjamin Hendrickson as Tom probably has the easiest part to play because Tom is a straightforwardly unsympathetic character, a cold, selfish and domineering man who always puts his own needs and interests before those of his wife or son. Jeremy Davies as Ray and the late Alberta Watson as Susan have a more difficult task. Their characters, after all, are breaching one of our most basic taboos, and yet it is important that the audience should, if not necessarily sympathise with them, at least be able to understand their motivation. I think that, to a large extent, Davies and Watson succeed in this task. Even if this film is not in the same class as Malle's or Bertolucci's, it is considerably better than many "dysfunctional family" films- certainly better than the three I named in my second paragraph. 6/10.

Given the budget limitations ($80,000), "Spanking the Monkey" manages to hold interest albeit with some poorly chosen scenes.

The core of the movie is the relationship between mother and son. The rest of the cast exists to point the way to the inevitable.

The philandering, materialistic, self absorbed husband/father illuminates the barren marriage.

The fumbling sexual attempts of the son with the girl next door and her contradictory accusations of his sexual attempts as either too rough or not rough enough (gay), understandably confuse the son and provide the mother with a mentoring, nurturing sexual role for her son about how to sexually succeed with women.

The mother, stumbling upon a bedroom sexual session between the son and the girl next door, reacts more in jealousy than in any maternally disproving fashion.

The mother's flirtatious ways with the male neighbors, doctors, and ultimately with the girl next door's father point out that while she may be her son's mother, she is still a very desirable woman in the eyes of the rest of the male world.

From the beginning through the end, you never believe the son and mother ever had a mother/child bonding. Both of them are intellectually superior, highly educated. The mother was young when she gave birth and she thinks of herself as her son's educational, intellectual and ultimately sexual mentor, not his mother.

The teenage son's inability to "spank his monkey" combined with the boredom, liquor and medications downed by his mother provide the explosive elements that are just waiting to be lit. The mother's seductive smile and a slight hiking of her nightgown set off the explosion.

This movie is nowhere near perfect, but it's compelling enough to let you sit through the unnecessary (e.g. stoner friends) and that's a lot more than you can say for most movies with a budget that is a thousand times greater.

Writer/director David O. Russell gives us a disturbing look at a dysfunctional family. Turn your head, Granny. Incest, masturbation, sexual impropriety and a family failing in communication, honor and respect. A promising pre-med student(Jeremy Davies) returns home from his freshman year at MIT to tend to his bedridden, mentally unstable mother(Alberta Watson)while dear old dad(Benjamin Hendrickson)is engaged with extended 'business trips' that allows him to practice adultery. Davies is caught up in a wad of sexual confusion. The family dog keeps interrupting the young man's attempts at self gratification. A young neighborhood girl(Carla Gallo)accuses him of rape after some heavy petting. Mom is attractive and needs some attention. The dutiful son ends up drinking with his mom and next comes the horizontal bop. This totally drives a stake into his secret fixation on his domineering mother. This dark comedy flirting with taboo subjects is disturbing as much as it is interesting. Now time to go spank the......

An independent film that bravely confronts the subject of consensual incest is presented as a dark comedy in which ALBERTA WATSON and JEREMY DAVIES, as mother and son, have the key roles. It's their mother/son relationship at the heart of the story that is compelling and sometimes erotic--especially the scene where Davies has to massage his mother's legs and toes while they discuss why her road travelling husband isn't there to do it for her.

When the story strays to others outside this relationship, it fails to make the same connection. The father is strictly a man so obsessed with his own career that he ignores his wife. She, in turn, is a manipulative shrew who virtually seduces her son because she's a needy woman. The son's friends are depicted as total drug-happy boors and boozers whose minds are completely idle.

At times the story becomes dark and brooding--even intense--and yet there's a surface tension broken by laughter at some of the shenanigans going on in this dysfunctional, to say the least, family.

Outstanding work by JEREMY DAVIES and ALBERTA WATSON. He's highly sympathetic in his predicament all the way through and she's totally despicable in the manner by which she exerts control over him. Both show complete understanding of their difficult roles.

Summing up: Interesting tale, character-driven and flawed, but worth watching.