Ma Mere

Ma Mere, from 2004, is soft-core porn for intellectuals. It's sexy, and since it's French and based on a novel by George Bataille we can tell ourselves that it's highbrow, when it is really not a very good movie.

Directed not very well by Christopher Honore, Ma Mere ("My Mother") is about a very fucked-up relationship between a teenage boy and his mother, kind of the Gallic version of Norman and Mrs. Bates. He is Pierre (Louis Garrel) who is visiting his parents after spending time in a Catholic boarding school. They live on one of the Canary Islands. His father is a bastard, and when he dies early in the film his mother (Isabelle Huppert) tells him to at least pretend to be sad.

She is also a mess, promiscuous and amoral, and draws Garrel into her debauched life. First she gets her friend and lover to take his virginity, which she does right in the middle of a plaza (apparently the Canary Islands are the place to have public sex--exhibitionists take note). Then, after an orgy in which mother and son may have gotten too close, she leaves to travel and has a young girl (Emma de Caunes) stay behind to keep an eye on him, and have sex with him.

I'm not sure what Honore is trying to say with this film, other than incest is creepy. He seems to want to shock us for the sake of shocking us, so we get sadomasochism, urination, and bloodsports. Garrel's character basically reflects those who he is with, so there's no spine to him, and Huppert, a strong performer, seems lost in her whorl of perversions.

Above all, Honore has no knack for telling a story. The editing is horrible, as characters pop up without explanation and scenes start and end a beat too soon.

Ma Mere is the perfect anti-Mother's Day film.