Stylish but barely mediocre overall

People are voting emotionally.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Absolutely Brilliant!

A 17 year old student comes to visit his beautiful mother (Isabelle Huppert) and father in their luxurious home on the Canary Islands. There is tension all around: we soon realize that the boy has been raised by his grandmother, in Catholic schools, seemingly due to obscure problems in his parents' marriage.Suddenly, the father dies in an accident on a business trip. Neither the boy, nor his mother appear to have any feelings for him whatsoever. She tells him to clear the father's things from his office, and to throw it all out unless he finds something of interest. The boy uncovers a vast collection of pornography, which catapults him into an erotic swoon. He furiously urinates on the office furniture, then collapses in fervent prayer.Lounging about the pool and in various states of undress, Huppert needles her son for being a religious stick-in-the-mud, for not taking part in the pleasures of life in the resort town. Wearing tight, revealing dresses, she goes out nightly to the local clubs, and finally concedes to bring the boy along. Slowly, disturbingly, she reveals herself to her son as an intensely sybaritic narcissist, in the manner that only French women, in particular Huppert, can be. Not only that, she is utterly and unrepentantly sexually depraved, and her depravity is shown to be the reason why her son was taken away from her. But he is back, and he is in love with her. She proceeds to take him down a path that can be described as the raping of an innocent.Ma mère is based on a work by the pessimistic Georges Bataille, the "metaphysician of evil." The story also very much brought to mind The Sexual Life of Catherine M, by French art critic Catherine Millet, and various novels by Michel Houellebecq. Definitely a Passolini influence as well. There is much nudity, and various sexual acts are presented. It has been widely panned as over-the-top, a Euro conceit, and I can assure you the film will not be everyone's cup of tea. But being somewhat familiar with the, er... territory, I was fascinated with Huppert's performance, her desire to elucidate the blank, erotic radiance of a remorseless, lonely hedonist.

With a poll coming up on IMDbs Classic Film Board for the best movies of 2004,I decided to have a look on Ebay for DVDs of titles from that year,and I stumbled across a fascinating-looking French flick,which led to me getting ready to meet this rather strange sounding mother.The plot:Since having barely spent any time together since she and her husband separated, Hélène and her son Pierre find themselves struggling to find much in common.Wanting to introduce Pierre to her party life style, Hélène decides to organise a holiday for them to go on.Just before they set off,tragic news reaches them that Pierre's dad/ Hélène ex-husband has suddenly died.Badly hit by the news,Pierre closes himself off from life,and from his mothers plans.Feeling that her son needs to let himself go, Hélène decides to do the thing that any parent would do in this situation,arrange for her "friends with benefits" to take his virginity,and to introduce Pierre to the vicious world of S&M.View on the film:Keeping the film placed at Pierre's point of view,writer/director Christophe Honoré superbly uses,long,stilted grainy close-ups to show the increasing (uncomfortable) level of intimacy that mum & son have for each other.Along with the good use of close-ups, Honoré films the explicit sex scenes in a blunt,to the point manner,with the lack of any music score, (apart from the jet-black Comedy ending) allowing for ever grunt and whip-slashing to be heard & felt.Adapting Georges Bataille's unfinished novel,the screenplay by Christophe Honoré takes advantage in the first half of the film's close-ups by showing a sense of warped intimacy grow between Hélène & Pierre,with Pierre becoming very,very interested in being as intimate with his mum as possible! For the second half of the title, Honoré keeps the mum & son largely apart,and whilst this does allow for Pierre's unpleasant sexual urges to be fully shown,it leads to the movie being unsure over what direction to go in,due to the relationship between Pierre & Hélène being moved from the centre.Leaving nothing to the imagination, Louis Garrel gives a raw performance as Pierre,with Garrel's sweet,innocent face being able to keep some level of support towards Pierre,even when his sexual desires (which Garrel perfectly performers with a real openness) become increasingly damaged. Looking rather alluring, Isabelle Huppert gives an excellent performance as Hélène.Giving Hélène a dominating swagger which allows her to dominate over any sexual partner, Huppert shows a tremendous coldness towards Pierre,which acts as a real friction to Hélène & Pierre incest desires,as Pierre finds everything out about his mother.

A cinematic version of a world Michel Houellebecq would be familiar with: despondent, cynical middle-aged has-beens lounging around Gran Canaria with its alien landscape beaches and urine-stained town centre in pursuit of sex, irrespective of its foul, loveless origin.Trying to find their way inamongst this existential trash-compactor are a handful of young-uns. Principally we are 'concerned' with Pierre (Louis Garrel) fighting the Oedipal constraints of his life with great breastbeating melodrama. Garrel looks like Bjørn Andresen, the boy-object of desire from Visconti's Death in Venice, and the film has the same fixation with choleric, seaside end-of-days as well as the same wobbly snap-zooms.I think Huppert sticks out awkwardly in this film, but that could very well be the role she needs to fulfil. Once again, sensible critical appraisal of her contribution is very difficult. As for the rest of the cast, full marks for commitment in a project that has the look but not the coherence or poise to do itself justice. 5/10

Yet another artsy-fartsy French production, from an unfilmable source: I own the original novel, though I haven't checked it out yet - but I can gather as much from what I've read of author Georges Bataille's work! Despite writer/director Honore''s good intentions to never display sex gratuitously but rather as a means of further developing the plot (as explained in the accompanying interview), the film comes off as both pretentious and pointless - while the updating and change of setting don't work as much as he thinks they do! Most of the characters are repellent and, therefore, one is not easily drawn towards their plight: in fact, the two young women leads Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel - both seriously boring! - get involved with (and, particularly, gorgeous Emma De Caunes in a difficult role) are the ones who come off best, no pun intended...