Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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49 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Oedipus Complex with Variations from Novelist Georges Bataille, October 27, 2005
'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, October 05
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mother of the Year, November 2, 2005
You've got to respect Isabelle Huppert. She does not avoid shock or controversy in her choice of films and her performances in them. "Ma Mere" could not have been made without her, or at least not made as unblinkingly. Heterosexuality in all its permutations, save that of love and commitment, provides the subtext for this adaptation of Georges Bataille's postwar French novel. A teenager is just coming of age and coming home from boarding school where his hedonist mother is, literally, laying in wait. The novel's narrative, updated to today on a sandy vacation island, would be right at home in an ancient Greek theatre.
As she was in "The Piano Teacher," Huppert is cast opposite a man (Louis Garrell) young enough to be her son, which is precisely the point. The picture is really about him and how he is pimped out and ultimately seduced by his mother. He parades about naked and, in some perverse way, seems to be asking for it. Indeed, all the sexual couplings occur in full view of others. The eroticism (S&M, bondage, incest) never crosses over into pornography, but it just might at any time, giving "Ma Mere" a momentum it otherwise lacks. The bodies and locales are so beautiful it's hard to take your eyes away, even if your mind is off wandering a bit.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"MA MERE" richly-deserved the NC-17 rating., February 10, 2006
Yesterday as I watched this film, I felt like, many others in here, somehow shocked by the dominant 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. Lastly everybody is invited to morally review 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? Ma mère takes place in the Canary Islands, where the film's family shares a home. The mother Hélène (Isabelle Huppert), cool and in charge, and her teenaged son Pierre (Louis Garrel), a pious Catholic back from boarding school, discuss his father's infidelity; the next they hear, he is dead in a car crash. Hélène launches into a wild series of parties, gradually involving her son in her drugging, drinking and sex-fuelled nights out. When she mysteriously goes away, her son is left in the care of her mistress Réa (Joana Preiss) and Hansi (Emma de Caunes), an icy blonde sadist with whom he falls in love. As the film evolves, we realize that this is a period of initiation for the young man until his mother can return and fully bring him to sexual maturity and adulthood.
This film puts a whole new dimension in the concept of what is normal, allowed or understood as morally acceptable, plus the abrupt ending will leave the viewer a little bit disturbed.
Isabelle Huppert is great on this film. She goes from teaching piano lessons to workshopping intercourse without so much as a flinch. Her quiet outwardly plain demeanor disguising the profoundly ill soul inside. This also goes for Louis Garrel who makes the breakable, innocent, needy and severely conflicted Pierre logical: 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 are a number of sex scenes in this film that are necessary for this story to be told. Indeed, not a film for everyone, but for those who admire the French cinema and untouchable topics, shouldn't be a stranger to this. This DVD does have an 'alternate' ending so stick around for that too.
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