One Man's Notes

I'm catching up on a backlog of Amazon DVD rentals in Lorna's absence, and first up was The Mother.

The heart of the movie is actually a relationship between a mother and daughter, which is strained, if not out-and-out damaged. When the father dies, the mother gets involved with the daughter's (already married) boyfriend. 

There's a reek of controversy about this film. "Oh, look, an old woman having sex with a young man! Fancy that!" But somehow, it all come across as mundane. The relationships feel cold and distant, and almost brutally uninvolving.

The problem at the heart of this movie is that none of the characters are in any way likeable. Can you imagine watching a train wreck and not really caring if anyone lives or dies? That's much how I felt about the movie. Sure, the performances are great, and the cinematography often excellent, given the blandly suburban nature of much of the story, but there's something profoundly empty at the heart of the movie, that no veneer of seriousness does anything to conceal. 

There's a good movie to be made about older people's sexuality, but this is not it.