Film Review--Ma Mere (2004)

Based on an unfinished novella by Georges Bataille, Christophe Honore’s Ma Mere is a valiant attempt to bring the surrealism of the great French eroticist to screen that, ultimately, is an enjoyable failure. The plotlines of the book and the film are the same, though the film does not espouse Bataille’s philosophy that is essential to the workings of the characters.

Isabelle Huppert plays the titular mom, who lives a life of luxury on the Canary Islands with her distant, ostensibly evil, husband (Phillipe Duclos). Pierre (Louis Garrel), their son who has been living with the grandparents since his youth, has grown and has come to live with his parents for some much needed rest in this idyllic locale. His father almost immediately leaves, leaving mother and son together alone, and never comes back, dying mysteriously while on “business.” Now, alone forever, Pierre begins to find things out about his parents, actions and levels of debauchery thus far unknown in his short life. As his mother, often drunk, reveals herself to him, he blocks it out in an attempt to retain his respect for her. She, however, is of one mind. She believes that Pierre cannot truly love her without losing all respect for her; he must find her repulsive so they can have a normal relationship. She is so convinced that his worship of her is ridiculous that she must throw her debauchery in his face and, as she brings home girlfriends for pleasure and, when his respect won’t wane, begins a quest to debauch her son. Well, needless to say, as this comes from a Bataille piece, it works. He begins to take the reigns of that transgressive horse and revels in all that is dark, drunken and erotic. As his respect has waned, his love has grown all the way into incestuous desire and the final taboo that, pleasurable as it may seem to them, the mother and son cannot bear to cross, even to their own destruction.

As a result of the subject matter addressed, this will be a difficult movie for anybody to watch, which is intended. But there is good to be had here. Isabelle Huppert and Louis Garrel both turn in fantastically believable performances as the morally destroyed mother and her sullen, confused son. Huppert is one of the great French actresses of our time and shows why here. Regardless of the subject at hand, she throws herself completely into her role and always makes her costars better. Garrel, who also did a fine job in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, is as realistic a teenager as I’ve seen in a long time, whose apathy toward his early situation is only matched by his enthusiasm once he is changed. Emma de Caunes, who plays the girl Pierre finds real pleasure with, also does an excellent job playing someone whose beauty belies a dark, deep seated reality; their relationship is really the highlight of the film. Shot in a no nonsense fashion, Honore allows the characters to breathe and gives them some motivation beyond the simple idea of sex. However, this is not enough. The name of the game here is transgression, and he revels in only that. It winds up on a similar level of Virginie Despentes’ Baise Moi or Leos Carax’s Pola X instead of transcending the transgression into the real humanity and philosophy present in the films of, say, Francois Ozon (who I am a huge fan of, which I've made abundantly clear). The reason for this is simple: Honore did not take his source material seriously.

Bataille is often misconstrued as a simple literary pornographer and, sometimes (and oh, so wrongly) given the label of a latter day Marquis de Sade. While I’ll never contend that some of Bataille’s stories don’t verge the pornographic, there is considerably more under the surface than eroticism for eroticism’s sake. Likewise, Bataille and Sade have in common the idea of combining the erotic/transgressive with an overriding philosophy. But there are fundamental differences. First, Bataille can actually write a story where Sade cannot. The Story of the Eye says in 120 pages what Sade cannot come close to saying in the 1200 pages that is 120 Days of Sodom. Additionally, Sade’s overriding philosophy is one of pure libertinage and hedonism, where Bataille’s intent is to take the sacred and turn it profane, and vice versa, to show that both are treated with the same disgust and reverence. The sole aim of breaking taboos is not the issue, but is what Honore has decided to focus on. The source novella is as much a religious text as an incestuous one, where Pierre stepwise loses his reverence, and the accompanying submissiveness, of the Catholic church to gain the exact same things from his mother, her debauched nihilism and all the others whom she has corrupted.

Deep down, this story is about Pierre trying to love his mother and everything she believes in. Unfortunately, the film simply wants to wallow in the sty of incest and sado-masochism. This is genuine failure, and makes the one accessible movie version of Bataille’s work (there is also a film of The Story of the Eye that apparently gets to Bataille’s real surrealistic heart, which I would love to see, but is yet unreleased on video and may never be) an utter misrepresentation of something that has real, if disturbing, merit. Watch the film for the bravura performances, but read the book for one of the most interesting and well written studies in nihilism, sexuality and the sacred.