Ma mère

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.

'Ma mère' is a film on the edge. Director Christophe Honoré (who gave us the little jewel 'Closer to Leo') has adapted a tough book by Georges Bataille that explores incest, sadomasochism, love, family dysfunction, and nebulous moral values of conflicted adolescents caught in the web of sexual investigation. It is filled with difficult scenes and ideas and certainly is not a film for the faint of heart or spirit, but at the same time it is a brave film depicting the dissociative state of sexual mind to which we've come after the influences of such thinkers as Bataille, Foucault, Derida, Gide, and others. Christophe Honoré captures an impossible story extremely well on the screen! 17-year-old Pierre (Louis Garrel of 'The Dreamers') is a spiritually challenged adolescent home from his Catholic school to be with his mother Hélène (Isabelle Huppert) whom he idolizes and loves and see his father (Philippe Duclos) who is distant in every sense. Hélène finds it necessary to inform Pierre of her background (her husband raped her when she was very young, causing such anguish that she has become addicted to a life of immorality as a means of escape), a means of warning him of what close association with her could mean. Pierre is blind to all things negative about Hélène and with the news of his father's death, he demands to be included in the wild sexual life of Hélène and her female lover Réa (Joana Preiss). Hélène is sexually attracted to Pierre and elects to include him in her games of voyeurism (watching Pierre during intercourse with Réa, introducing him to the shallow and compulsive Hansi (Emma de Caunes), mutilation, and all forms of debauchery.

The group goes to the sunny islands off Spain where Pierre falls in love with the dangerous Hansi and follows her lead in learning about his mother's strange and dangerous proclivities, sexual acts which include the involvement of young Loulou (Jean-Baptiste Montagut), a young man whom they torture for the sake of sexual satisfaction. All the while that Pierre is being introduced into Hélène's bizarre world he is conflicted by his superego in the form of the Catholic Church: he is seen reciting catechism in the desert surrounded by a silent, nude Greek chorus a la Fellini. Ultimately the 'vacation' is over and Pierre returns home with Hélène and the ultimate incestuous aspect of the Oedipus complex plays out in a completely bizarre and very dark way. To say more would destroy the impact of the ending.

Isabelle Huppert is brilliant as always, her quiet outwardly plain demeanor disguising the profoundly ill soul inside. Likewise Louis Garrel makes the fragile, gullible, needy and severely conflicted Pierre understandable: we may not agree with his choices as he wades through the strange waters of perversion, but we never lose sight of his vulnerability and passionate need to be loved. There is a lot of graphic sex in this film, but this particular story could not be told without it. Christophe Honoré manages this strange tale by letting the story take us into the realm of the unreal and he never for a moment loses our interest.

Even the music scoring is substantive, using Samuel Barber's own setting of his famous 'Adagio for Strings' for the choral 'Agnus Dei', most appropriately heard when Pierre is mentally visiting his spiritual conflicts with his corporal deeds. This is clearly not a film for everyone, but for those who admire the French cinema history of uncovering strange tales, this is a fine example. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp

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.

If you like French existentialist movies (which in this case is also a perverse "coming of age" movie), this is one of the better ones; if not, don't bother. The first half is slow and cumbersome with the scenes more like vignettes to reveal the Son's naiveté, while the Mother remains inaccessible until the very end. While the second half remains cumbersome through choppy editing, it is more interesting with the introduction of Hansi and Loulou. Most people seem to get hung up over the Libertine attitudes portrayed through deviant sexual activities, but what I took away was the idea that the psyche of willing participants, and particularly the young or immature, can be damaged by any emotionally charged experience, be it sexual or religious. The struggle is to rise above it. The one scene of particular interest revealed the blurred distinctions between dominant and submissive personalities (Hansi & Loulou), with the Sadist revealed as a Masochist by the emotional damage they were inflicting on themselves through the physical damage inflicted on someone they cared about. The Sadist/Masochist roles are easily reversed as seen through Loulou's comment when he throws himself in the pool in the deleted scene.

As I watched the movie, I felt (probably like many others) somehow shocked by the powerful and explicit images. Yet it can't be said that this is merely done to make a controversial film. The viewer gets a slowly developing picture of the relationship between mother and son, or more correctly of the adaptation of mother's lifestyle by her son. Finally everybody is invited to morally judge the relations, actions and sayings of the main characters. But as most viewers are likely to enjoy the "forbidden" relationships or explicit scenes, who are we to give criticism? This film puts a whole new dimension in the concept of what is normal, allowed or understood as morally acceptable. It's sometimes almost revolting, and yet when you've seen the story-lines that led to these scenes, you may find the actions acceptable (or maybe I've a twisted mind). I would like to call the attention to the beautifully chosen soundtrack and the abrupt ending, which leaves the viewer a little bit disturbed.