A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Saturday, August 23, 2025

Ma Mère (Christophe Honoré, 2004)

Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel in Ma Mère

Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Louis Garrel, Emma de Caunes, Joana Preiss, Jean-Baptiste Montagut, Dominique Reymond, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Duclos. Screenplay: Christophe Honoré, based on a novel by Georges Bataille. Cinematography: Hélène Louvart. Production design: Laurent Allaire. Film editing: Chantal Hymans. 

Sex without taboos is like tennis without a net. That seems to be one message of Christophe Honoré's Ma Mêre, which is so drenched in depictions of sexual activity that it earned an NC-17 rating in the U.S. Unfortunately, it's also boring. Featuring everything from public copulation to incest, with actors of the first order, it trudges from one shocking moment to another without ever engaging the audience's sympathy or interest. Isabelle Huppert plays the mother, who confesses to her son (Louis Garrel) after his father's death that she's a slut -- her word, or the French equivalent for it. He volunteers to be tutored by her in sexual freedom, though he's still manifesting elements of his Catholic schooling, a detail that feels like it's meant to make some symbolic point but doesn't. To aid in his education she enlists her friend and lover Réa (Joana Preiss) and a young woman, Hansi (Emma de Caunes). Sure enough, everything gets out of hand and la petite mort is succeeded by actual death. If these were characters we might potentially feel some sympathy for, the film could have made an impact, but my only reaction was relief when it was over. 

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