Ma mère
Encyclopedia
My Mother is a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
-Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n-Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
-Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
2004 movie about the fictional story of an incestuous relationship between a 17-year-old boy and his attractive, promiscuous, 43-year-old mother. The movie stars Isabelle Hupert, Louis Garrel
Louis Garrel
Louis Garrel is a French actor. He is best known for his starring role in The Dreamers, directed by Bernardo Bertolucci...
, Emma de Caunes
Emma de Caunes
Emma de Caunes is a French film actress. She is best known for playing the role of Sabine in Mr. Bean's Holiday.- Life and career :...
, Joana Preiss, Philipe Duclos and Jean-Baptiste Montagut. French director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
Christophe Honoré
Christophe Honoré
Christophe Honoré is a French writer and film director born in Carhaix, Finistère in 1970.After moving to Paris in 1995, he wrote articles in "Les Cahiers du Cinéma." He started writing soon-after. His 1996 book Tout contre Léo talks about HIV and is aimed at young adults; he made it into a movie...
, who wrote the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
, based it on the controversial and posthumous novel of the same name by French author George Bataille. Honoré shot the film on location on the island of Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, with a population of 838,397 which constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago...
, Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Its dialogue is almost entirely in French with brief segments in Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Film distribution company TLA Releasing
TLA Releasing
TLA Releasing is a US film distribution company owned by TLA Entertainment Group. In March 2011, a new LLC was formed for the operation. Its primary output is LGBT-related films from all over the world under the "TLA Releasing" label, as well as horror films under the label "Danger After Dark"...
released Ma mère in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, at the Cannes Film Market, on 13 May 2004.
Internet movie site Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
indicates Ma mère has received mixed but largely negative reviews over time, with an average of 3.7 points out of 10. Of the 40 reviews posted on Rotten Tomatoes, only five are positive. Jonathan Romney associates the film with the New French Extremity
New French Extremity
New French Extremity is a term coined by Artforum critic James Quandt for a collection of transgressive films by French directors at the turn of the 21st century. The filmmakers are also discussed by Jonathan Romney of The Independent...
.
Preliminary Scenes
The story revolves around pious, young Pierre (Louis Garrel) who has just left a CatholicCatholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
boarding school to live with his wealthy parents at their villa
Villa
A villa was originally an ancient Roman upper-class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity,...
on the island of Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria
Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, with a population of 838,397 which constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago...
. Pierre's father (Philipe Duclos) dies early in the movie, leaving his mother, Hélène (Isabelle Huppert) to care for him. Pierre soon learns, however, of the depraved nature of his parents.
While in a restaurant, his mother reveals to him that she has been unfaithful to her husband many times with his knowledge and feels no shame about it. She then insists that her son accept her promiscuous ways.
Soon after this, Pierre finds a closet full of his father's pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
. His reaction is to furiously masturbate and then to urinate on the magazine pages. However, there are several far more shocking surprises in store for Pierre.
Hélène encourages her uninhibited sex buddy, Réa (Joana Preiss), to take her son's virginity. She does so but in public and on a concrete floor at Gran Canaria's Yumbo Centrum, a popular shopping and nightlife complex. Hélène looks on longingly as the partially clothed couple copulates with passersby raising no objections.
Afterward, Hélène includes her son in an orgy with her friends, including Hansi (Emma de Caunes), a sweet-faced young woman who later becomes Pierre's girlfriend. After the orgy, Hélène decides that she must leave her son to travel. While saying goodbye to Pierre, she implies that something taboo has happened between them and that she must leave to prevent it from happening again.
Upon Hélène's departure, Hansi enters Pierre's life as a friend. She admits befriending Pierre at Hélène's encouragement but denies receiving a fee from her. Their friendship blossoms into a tender romance and they both fall in love. During their relationship, Hansi reveals that she has participated in sado-masochistic sex many times as a dominatrix
Dominatrix
Dominatrix or mistress is a woman or women who takes the dominant role in bondage, discipline and sadomasochism, or BDSM. A common form of address for a submissive to a dominatrix is "mistress", "ma'am", "domina" or "maîtresse"...
with her friend Loulou (Jean-Baptiste Montagut) as the willing masochist. She adds Hélène arranged these encounters as sexual exhibitions for tourists.
After an extended absence from the movie, Hélène returns home with Réa in tow because Hélène has finally tired of her sexual adventures. Upon arriving, she finds her son and Hansi socializing at a bar near the villa. Hélène and Pierre greet each other by chatting and gazing into each other's eyes like lovers while Hansi looks on jealously. Finally, Hélène invites her son to sleep with her. He agrees.
Climax
The "sex" scene between mother and son is an unconventional cinematic montage of facial expressions, bare skin, groans, stroking, self injuring and vocalized thoughts but very little sex. The characters are illuminated first only by dim lighting and then later by flash light beams.It begins with Hélène lying on the tile floor of their villa with a shirtless Pierre kneeling beside her. She has opened her dress but is still wearing panties and a bra. The pitch black of night surrounds them.
"Wrong is not what we’re about to do. Wrong is wanting to survive it," Hélène thinks in a moment of foreshadowing.
"You’re my mother and my love," Pierre insists as he gazes lovingly at her.
Inexplicably, Hélène’s first act is to slowly cut the lower, right side of her abdomen with a small knife. Hélène then guides her son’s left hand to the wound. He gently massages it, smearing blood on her abdomen.
Hélène then takes her son’s right hand and gently bites it while groaning lightly. The scene then suddenly changes. Although it’s not obvious at first, mother and son are now sitting up on the floor. Pierre is leaning against his mother with his back to her face. Their state of undress has not changed. Hélène reaches around her son’s waist and undoes his pants and zipper. Pierre then begins to masturbate.
While Pierre masturbates, Hélène raises the knife to her throat which flashes just for a moment on camera and then vanishes in the dark. We hear a faint slicing sound and Hélène seems to gasp in pain as her head slumps forward. Pierre, apparently unaware, continues masturbating. The scene abruptly ends here.
It’s not clear whether the couple ever had oral, vaginal or anal sex in this scene. Despite this, it later becomes obvious that Hélène has committed suicide in apparent guilt over her relationship with her son.
Final Scenes
Paramedics remove Hélène's body from the villa and place it in an ambulanceAmbulance
An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient...
. Réa enters the ambulance but Pierre does not. He runs futilely after it as it drives away. Next we see a mortuary employee cleaning Hélène's body to make it presentable for viewing.
In the final scene, Pierre enters a room of the mortuary containing his mother's body in a glass case. He cries as he looks at her then slumps to the floor, his back against the wall, and begins masturbating. Observing this, an employee enters and tries to lift Pierre off the floor. Pierre then rushes toward his mother and screams "Mom, I don't want to die!" The background music for this scene is Happy Together
Happy Together (song)
"Happy Together" is a 1967 song from The Turtles' album of the same name. Released in February 1967, the song knocked The Beatles' "Penny Lane" out of the #1 slot for three weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the group's only chart-topper. "Happy Together" reached #12 on the UK Singles Chart in...
by The Turtles
The Turtles
The Turtles are an American rock group led by vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman. The band became notable for several Top 40 hits beginning with its cover version of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" in 1965...
. The credits roll.