Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

morrison-dylan-fan 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.

pauliebleeker Usually the French are much better at tackling "taboo" subjects, but the way this film was done was AWFUL. I appreciate the works of Louis Garrel and Isabelle Huppert, which was the only draw for me to watch Ma Mère. I hadn't read the book the film was adapted from, but the hype was too much to ignore so I watched it. BAD CHOICE. Louis Garrel was decent, as decent as he could be in such an awful film. Isabelle Huppert's performance was not her best, a lot of long pauses and dramatic painful-staring-off-into-the-world stares that just got annoying after awhile. The film did a bad job at establishing the characters. At some parts, I felt as if the characters did things for no reason without ever providing much background to why they act that way and other characters just felt really unnecessary to the story. You leave the film feeling like you don't understand any of the characters, why they do the things they do, even worse you leave not feeling a single emotion of sympathy or hate or ANYTHING for the characters. I also found myself lost at a few parts due to two reasons. 1.) The way the movie was filmed was very distracting, as if someone with a hand-held home video camera kept zooming in and out of the actors faces and 2.) some shots were very dark which made it difficult to understand what was going on (especially at the end). I felt like the film strayed a bit from actually telling an unique story, and became more about nude shots and unusual sex scenes to seem more "daring" and "edgy." I didn't feel like I took anything from the film, or the point of the film. If you want to watch a good Christophe Honoré film, I would advise you to skip this and pick up Les Chansons d'Amour starring Garrel as well.

Pitumisio This is a movie which I saw two years ago (I am a man) with a woman who suggested we'd watch it while in intimate circumstances. As I do not intend nor feel the need to give details, I will only say I did not see that French girl again. I hardly watched it; just remembered Isabelle Huppert was in the cast.My curiosity -or boredom- was strong last night, and I rented it to see what I'd missed. As I don't understand French I could not even have a gist of what the plot was, but I could last night: a very poor attempt to glamorise perversion and diss catholicism. I am a little bit of a pervert and a feeble religious observant, so I may not be accused of being biased or discriminating European art films.Now I know why I did not feel the need to call her again.

acrobatbleeder Sure its got a decent cast, but I need a heck of a lot more than gratuitous BDSM behavior to keep my interest. In fact, I found the film distasteful. If you're into degrading sexual behavior, this one's for you. I don't need it to get off.I suppose its titillating for some and an opportunity to look into a world most of us don't inhabit. On the other hand, most of us don't inhabit that world because it is quite dehumanizing.Its not full of leather and bondage, don't get me wrong, but the relationships and outlook portrayed are an attempt at legitimizing something that its participants would like to rationalize as "just another acceptable way of doing their own thing".