MA MERE (2004)

Written & Directed By: Christophe Honore 
Based On The Novel By: Goeroges Bastille 
Cinematography By: Helene Louvart 
Editor: Chantal Hymans 

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel, Emma de Caunes, Joana Preiss, Jean-Baptiste Montagut, Dominique Reymond
-- Pierre, a youth, comes from his grandmother's in France to stay with his parents in the Canary Islands. His father talks oddly about his lost youth and leaves abruptly for France. Mom promises to take Pierre to a nightclub, remarking that people will think he's her lover. He prays. His father dies in France, and his mother wants him to empty his father's office; Pierre finds it full of pornography. His mother takes him in tow into a night world without morality, a world of sexual exploitation, exhibitionism, and wildness. What will Pierre make of this, and what, ultimately, will he make of his mother?

Rated NC-!7

Is it art or is it pornography. Hobos to say, but this is a bad film that the only reason to watch the film is to see the beautiful euro-trash females in the hide and in sex scenes that seem realistic.

I just can't get into a film about a mother and son who feel sexual feelings for each other. But don't act on them. --The film is certainly erotic and has plenty of fetishes for the characters to act on and live out. As we watch the characters as their increasingly ridiculous erotic adventures.

From here on is spoilers. As this film is one you would watch more as a x-rated porn film then an actual art film. At least in my opinion as the film seems like those that as a child I would watch on cable dubbed never really knowing or paying too close attention to the plot. Though knowing nudity was involved and just sitting through the sort to get to the sex and nudity. The rest of the film feeling like filler. Now as a teen that was great, but now as an adult while it brings back a certain nostalgia. If that is all the film is really about it is disappointing or should have advertised that fact originally. Especially with such major actors cast in the film.

The story is a son comes home from boarding school after the death of his father. His mother, now a widow starts hanging out with some eurotrash women and together, they go out at night, seduce and prostitute themselves. Then the eurotrash friend seduces the sexually frustrated son. That the film let's us know is sexually Frustrated by showing him constantly masturbating to his father's porn collection. Not only does she seduce him. She has sex with him in public, then participates in an orgy with him. Which his mother constantly watches him and her and then actually congratulates him after. Then his mother leaves him. So he and a new girl he has met at the orgy and his mother has left him with start To date and have more adventures.

Major spoilers

The rest of the film involves beating a man half to death with a riding crop in a a s &; m game. A man masturbating to his mothers corpse. The mother slicing her own throat while giving her son a hand job.

End major spoiler

I'm sorry I just really couldn't get into this film. I just don't want anyone to has to sit through this film expecting something that is never coming. It was more like porn with a plot that had to include every fetish to appeal to every market out there.

This movie is based on a book. Why would anyone want to make it into a film? Maybe it sounded better on paper then it is in live action. I don't have European sensibilities. I'm just an ignorant American. So I don't have too much Of an opinion on it.

For those of you who insist on sitting through it. Just to see if you can make it to the en as some kind of endurance test, why? You paid to see this for some kind of entertainment or at least to e intrigued.

I can admit the women in this film are fetching, but be warned there are not really three women to look at.

One of the problems with review in foreign films at times is that since they are in another language, a language you don't really speak. Is that it is harder to tell if the acting is really goo of bad. You just assume they are doing a good job as they seem believable with the text on the bottom of the screen. Or you go by the way they are saying things and the physicality.

Half the time you are reading subtitles so you look up after and may have missed a subtlety or a shot.

I give Isabelle Huppert credit as he mashes I keep her head held high and comes out of the film unscathed.

If you are looking for what amounts to erotic porn rent it. If not skip it.

 Grade: D