MA MERE (Christophe Honoré). 110 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (July 1). For venues and times, see Movies, page 105. Rating: NN
Rating: NN
Like a spoiled, pampered child who’s got nothing to say, Christophe Honoré ‘s Ma Mère sets out to shock and disgust but ends up merely being tedious.
Loosely based on a novel by Georges Bataille, it tells the twisted coming-of-age tale of Pierre ( Louis Garrel ), a devout teenager who comes home from school to find his bored parents tearing each other apart. Philandering dad soon dies in a car crash, and mom ( Isabelle Huppert ), eyeing her boy lasciviously, is busy acting out chapters from the Marquis de Sade.
Honoré is no Michael Haneke, whose The Piano Teacher (also with Huppert exploring her kinky side) gave us repression and rigidity finding a natural outlet in sexuality.
Here, Huppert’s boozing, promiscuous title character, Hélène, palms off her prostitute friends on her son, trying for some sort of Gallic rite of passage. Pierre gets to do fun things like lick his mom’s lover’s finger after it’s been inserted in his rectum. Not exactly an Oscar-worthy moment.
The always watchable Huppert nails her character’s sense of boredom – there’s a reason she was cast as Emma Bovary – but can’t show us how or why she got to this particular juncture. Pierre’s religious turnaround is also glossed over too quickly.
The film’s setting is the sun-kissed Canary Islands, with their nude beaches and 24/7 nightclubs. Honoré’s probably trying to show the effect on normal life of the hedonistic sex tourism business.
An intriguing idea, but his is a minor entry in the cinema of cruelty.
