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.

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......

It's simply another one of the Greek myths retold in a modern setting. Those Greeks really knew how to write a cunning tale that cuts close to the bone. They wrote straight from human experience and feeling. Incest crept up on the young hero of the film with terrifying inevitability. They both knew what they were getting into, and went ahead even though they knew that they would subsequently experience "decision regret". A very enjoyable film that magically captures the passion of a summer holiday gone badly wrong.

Copying a tried and tested tale from the past is always a successful recipe for a good modern film, as Lucas has shown with borrowing from Homer's "The Iliad". This film is certainly capable of provoking strong emotion from the viewer, and I think that most of us would have a hard time resisting sexual advances in those circumstances if the woman in question was such a fox.

A compelling tale, made all the more sickening for it's overt basis in human experience.

Not one to watch with your mum (unless you fancy her!).

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.

Considering the plethora of reviews here, both good and bad, there isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said. I will add that the first half works "reasonably" well, allowing viewers to understand perhaps how such a thing as an incestuous encounter could possibly happen. But then the film derails, and derails big time. The boy blames his mother completely for what they did, and the film seems to side with him despite the fact that it had previously shown us that he was just as guilty as she in the liaison. The film gets unspeakably ugly from there. The subject of consensual incest has been addressed by film only a few times over the years, always with unsatisfactory results---perhaps this is reflective of society's uneasiness with the subject. Consensual incest is about the only "sexual more" that is never discussed (even by psychologists), even though it likely occurs in real life with more frequency than we would like to believe.