Une mère (2015)
Directed by Christine Carrière

Film Review

In 1994, Mathilde Seigner made an impressive cinematic debut as the lead in Rosine, director Christine Carrière's first feature.  Twenty years on, the two women are reunited for a film in which Seigner once again plays the single mother, but this time failing dismally to cope with the teenage son from Hell.  It's Carrière's first film since her well-received social realist drama Darling (2007), and it struggles to be much more than an embarrassing misfire, a strong central performance from Seigner not withstanding.  Une mère has some striking similarities with Emmanuelle Bercot's La Tête haute (2015), both revolving around a wild adolescent who seems incapable of reform as he rushes towards adulthood and the threat of an extended period behind bars.  But whereas Bercot succeeds in getting us to sympathise with the plight of her self-destructive teenager in her involving drama, Carrière fails to deliver much more than yet another turgid piece of social miserablism, as lacking in substance as it is clunkily ineffective in its direction.

Carrière is at least blessed with her casting choices, with Seigner on fine form alongside co-star Kacey Mottet Klein, the revelation of Ursula Meier's L'Enfant d'en haut (2012), in which he played a far more sympathetic teenager.  Klein brings a gruesome reality to his portrayal of a feral adolescent who is unable to control his violent outbursts, let alone tame his criminal tendencies, and you can readily see the actor gunning and slashing his way through an ultra-violent gangster film in a few years' time, without so much as batting an eyelid.  The problem is that, despite the immense effort they put into their performances, both Seigner and Klein have an uphill job trying to make their characters look like real human beings.  Carrière insists on making them resemble crude archetypes - the woefully inadequate mother and the thuggish son - and there's a painful lack of subtlety, both in the characterisation and the way in which the characters interact.  With the main protagonists sketched as thinly as possible, thereby betraying a scant comprehension of the underlying issues, the spectre of social determinism is conjured up to explain it all - Seigner comes to accept that it is because she has failed as a mother that she has ended up with a monster for a son.

Despite the pedigree of its cast and director, Une mère has all the same failings as Philippe Claudel's equally disappointing Une enfance (2015), stemming primarily from its author's inability (or willingness) to get too closely involved with the subject matter.  Instead of trying to help us understand why a mother and her son should end up with such an antipathetic relationship, the film merely presents it as a given and we either accept what we see or we don't.  Contrast this with Rosine, in which the intense bond between a mother and her daughter is examined with delicacy and genuine compassion.  There's no such tact or emotional realism in Une mère, just two ill-matched characters locked in mortal combat like mindless automata.  Seigner makes us feel her character's distress  in a few scenes, and we can understand why a teenager with such pronounced behavioural problems should feel so alienated from his mother - but it's all so superficial and coldly mechanistic.  What's missing from this film is real human feeling and an impression of hope that both characters have a future.  After Emmanuelle Bercot's emotionally charged film, Une mère can't help feeling drearily sterile.

Film Synopsis

Forty-something Marie has a hard time trying to bring up her troublesome 16-year-old son Guillaume by herself.  A vicious tearaway easily drawn into a life of crime, the teenager is prone to violent outbursts and looks destined for a spell in prison unless he can change his ways.  Even with her ex-partner Pierre on hand to support her, Marie finds it increasingly difficult to cope and can hardly wait for the day when her detested son walks out of her life for good.  Is it because she is a bad mother that she now finds herself saddled with a bad son?