“MA MERE” (2004)

Starring: Louis Garrel, Isabelle Huppert, Emma de Caunes, Joana Preiss & Jean-Baptiste Montagut
Written by Georges Bataille (novel) & Christophe Honore
Directed by Christophe Honore

Polly Staffle Rating: *

Louis Garrel is one of two things – a young great actor in the making that doesn’t shy away from any role, or a pretty screwed up guy. The son of French director Philippe Garrel and actress Brigett Sy, Louis has probably been around film sets his entire life. This would explain why he is so at ease in front of the camera - both clothed and unclothed. The first time I saw him in a film was in Bernardo Bertolucci’s NC-17 incoherent mess “The Dreamers.” I thought it was crap and didn’t care for Louis’ character either, who lusted after his movie-loving twin sister. Christophe Honore’s French sexathon “Ma Mere” is another NC-17 film starring Louis Garrel. This time his character wants to bang his mother. These topics are so taboo, Howard Stern doesn’t even go there. Louis Garrel has been in two films with incestuous undertones. I don’t know if I should consider him a groundbreaking genius or write him off as a freak-nasty creep. Since this film has no plot and makes absolutely no sense, I’m leaning toward the latter.

Based on a controversial novel, “Ma Mere” follows Pierre (Lois Garrel) as he becomes involved in his mother’s strange world of sexuality. He’s mother is a whore, a paid whore. But don’t get too excited just yet. She’s no M.I.L.F. like the one in the Fountains of Wayne video “Stacey’s Mom.” She could actually pass as Pierre’s grandmother. She’s more like a cross between Fergie and Susan Sarandon, both on bad days. I mean the Duchess, not Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas. And I’m not taking about Susan Sarandon as Janet in the “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I’m talking add 15 years to her now on a morning where she rolled out of bed and discovered her dog’s just been shot and her house is on fire. Not that there is a problem with that. I’m just saying what 17-year-old boy wants to have sex with his 60-year-old washed up, unlikable prostitute mom? What makes it worse is there isn’t a loving relationship between the two either. It is purely sexual. To top it off, Mom is sort of a dominatrix. Again, don’t get pumped up thinking of a mid thirties cat-suited Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman Returns” or Lady Heather from “C.S.I.” There’s no rubber outfits or thigh-high boots on display. It’s just Mom, the worn out slut, is overly sexual and loving her some rough play. Don’t worry, Mom and Son never do the deed. I’m going to ruin the movie by telling you what does happen between them, but I wouldn’t want you to waste an hour and fifty minutes of your life on this trash anyway.

Here’s Cliffs Notes on “Ma Mere”: Mom and Son are sitting in the backseat of a car with one of Mom’s younger female friends Rea, who proceeds to stick her finger in Pierre’s rear end. Mom then smells it. Son begins sucking the finger and Mom begins to play with Rea’s breasts. Later, Sonny boy is passed out on a street corner at what appears to be a subway station. Mom sends Rea over to strip him naked. The woman first licks his rear and then has sex with him. Mom watches as the twosome screw like a home improvement show on fast forward as people practically have to step over them. Back at the house, Mom and Rea are laying in bed together. Mom is barely dressed and Rea is nude. Son comes up from behind and practically rapes Rea all the while kissing on Mom’s legs. There are at least two other people in the room and Pierre chooses to ogle his Mom as he climaxes. Mom decides she and her kiddo have gone too far and gets the hell out of town. She leaves behind another friend Hansi to keep her son occupied. Pierre doesn’t like Hansi. Things are awkward between them. Hansi has a male friend named LouLou that tells about a time he lived in a man’s house as a submissive sex slave. Son soon learns all the ins and outs of Mom’s nasty secrets. Mom and Hansi have done lots of twisted things. At first he pretends to be offended, but soon Pierre is participating in bondage with Hansi. They basically spend a night torturing LouLou. “Oh if mom could see me now,” Pierre probably was thinking to himself. Lucky for him, Mom returns because the end of the movie is near. Mom and Son get hot and heavy. She sticks her hands down his pants while she slices open her throat and commits suicide. Son then goes to see Mom in the morgue and starts masturbating. Son gets kicked out of the place. “What’s the problem buddy? That’s ma mere,” Pierre might have wanted to say. Then the credits roll.

Maybe it’s just me, but not only is most of what occurs in the film disgusting; it’s not even a story. How the hell does a film like this get made? Georges Bataille - sometimes called the “metaphysician of evil” due to his writings on sex, death, degradation and the power of obscenities - thought up this brilliant story sometime in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s and begin writing a novel. Some other genius had to then read it after Bataille’s death in 1962 and think it was good enough to publish even though it was incomplete. So in 1966 the unfinished work was released. Honore then reads the book and decides it needs to made into a film and somehow gets the backing to do that. He is then able to convince folks to play the roles. So again I ask, how the hell does a film about a boy wanting to “sex up” his mom get made? It took about two years for Rob Zombie’s “House of 1,000 Corpses” and Vincent Gallo’s “Brown Bunny” to get released and Larry Clark’s “Ken Park” is going to top that time. How does a film with no redeeming qualities, several shots of penises and a son playing with himself in front of his dead mother ever get a release? I guess that just goes to show the difference between America and France. In the United States it’s shocking and taboo to have gay cowboys in a movie.

What sucks is there is a story in “Ma Mere” that could be told. “What the hell am I talking about,” you ask. Well, people say many children grow up in search of their opposite sex parent as their ideal mate. All boys grow up to marry their mother. All girls grow up to marry their father. Maybe there is something to it and maybe there’s not, but it is something that could be explored in a script. To take that a little further, the script could examine the Oedipus and the Electra complexes. These are a child’s unconscious desire for exclusive love from their opposite sex parent and the wish of death upon their same sex parent. “Ma Mere” doesn’t go there and anyone who says it does is fooling themselves. Who knows, had Bataille completed his story, maybe it would have. Just think of “The Sixth Sense” and how every scene has to be played out perfectly for the ending to work. Take away some of the unconnected dots early in the movie that get connected in the last few moments and what do you have? Now take away the ending and what do you have? M. Night Shyamalan has even said his final product is nothing like his original concept. “The first draft was bad, so I threw it out and started again on page one,” Shyamalan has been quoted as saying. “Second draft, the same thing. I threw it out, page one again. It started out as a movie about a serial killer with [Bruce Willis] as a crime photographer. Then I realized it was me doing ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’ It wasn’t until about the fifth draft that I really began to figure it out. It was then that I realized [the twist at the end]. It took me five more drafts to execute it right.” Had Shyamalan died after the first draft and someone later produced the film, it wouldn’t be what it now is. Maybe releasing the original “Ma Mere” book was a bad idea because it was unfinished. Repeating myself, I know, but again I ask, how the hell did this film get made?

More offensive to me than anything that happens visually in the film is director Christophe Honore’s choice in music - specifically Samuel Barber’s 1938 classical piece “Adagio For Strings.” This song is best known as the theme from “Platoon” and was also used in “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Elephant Man” and a few other places here and there. “Adagio for Strings” It is a very powerful work of art. Honore uses it here to try and manipulate his audience. “My movie is important,” is what the film screams out every time I hear the song on the soundtrack as it attempts to brainwash its viewer. It didn’t work on me. You can score an anal sex scene with “We are the World,” but you’re still not adding to your finished product and sending a global message. You’re simply using the wrong music for your film. Using “Adagio For Strings” is pretentious and offensive. The audience that is going to stick it out through a twisted family love fest like this movie is obviously open minded enough to give non mainstream stories a chance. They don’t have to be won over with recognizable music. What we need is a coherent story with some type of purpose and reason to exist in the first place. If you don’t believe me, just ask yo mama.

- CCF, September 2006