A 17 year old student comes to visit his beautiful mother (Isabelle Huppert) and father in their luxurious home on the Canary Islands. There is tension all around: we soon realize that the boy has been raised by his grandmother, in Catholic schools, seemingly due to obscure problems in his parents' marriage.Suddenly, the father dies in an accident on a business trip. Neither the boy, nor his mother appear to have any feelings for him whatsoever. She tells him to clear the father's things from his office, and to throw it all out unless he finds something of interest. The boy uncovers a vast collection of pornography, which catapults him into an erotic swoon. He furiously urinates on the office furniture, then collapses in fervent prayer.Lounging about the pool and in various states of undress, Huppert needles her son for being a religious stick-in-the-mud, for not taking part in the pleasures of life in the resort town. Wearing tight, revealing dresses, she goes out nightly to the local clubs, and finally concedes to bring the boy along. Slowly, disturbingly, she reveals herself to her son as an intensely sybaritic narcissist, in the manner that only French women, in particular Huppert, can be. Not only that, she is utterly and unrepentantly sexually depraved, and her depravity is shown to be the reason why her son was taken away from her. But he is back, and he is in love with her. She proceeds to take him down a path that can be described as the raping of an innocent.Ma mère is based on a work by the pessimistic Georges Bataille, the "metaphysician of evil." The story also very much brought to mind The Sexual Life of Catherine M, by French art critic Catherine Millet, and various novels by Michel Houellebecq. Definitely a Passolini influence as well. There is much nudity, and various sexual acts are presented. It has been widely panned as over-the-top, a Euro conceit, and I can assure you the film will not be everyone's cup of tea. But being somewhat familiar with the, er... territory, I was fascinated with Huppert's performance, her desire to elucidate the blank, erotic radiance of a remorseless, lonely hedonist.

Isabelle Huppert is one of the greatest and boldest actresses there is, unafraid of any role she's given. Unfortunately that sometimes means she's given parts that are, quite frankly, beneath her. Her role in Christophe Honore's screen version of Georges Bataille's novel "Ma Mere" is one of them. She plays a hedonistic woman who, after the death of her husband, initiates her adoring young son in her lifestyle. She attacks the part gamely enough as does a frequently nude young Louis Garrel as the son but the film is mostly unpleasant and shallow. It's like a porn movie with the pretensions of seriousness, as if all sex is just a cover for something more profound rather than as an end in itself. Ultimately it reminded of seventies Europorn and it leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.

Ma Mère, 2004 ~~ Cristophe HonoréViewed as an alternate choice on closing day at the 2004 London Film Festival "MA MÈRE" is a socio-pathological shocker from France, starring one of the best of all Gallic actresses, Isabelle Huppert. I went in knowing nothing about the film except that it was a Huppert vehicle in French, and from the title, "My Mother", expecting some sort of family drama, or possibly, even a comedy. I emerged from the theatre not quite sure whether I was more appalled or more exhilarated, but certain that I had seen still another exceptional Huppert performance (I've seen at least 20 of her previous films), and that this was the best of all possible films with which to conclude my own personal London Film Festival, 2004. Isabelle Huppert is living monster-sacré of an actress totally in control of her act every second on screen. At the same time she is a woman who seems to get sexier with age and wilder and more uninhibited with each succeeding role. In this film, directed by Christophe Honoré and based on a 1977 neo-Rabelaisian novel by Georges Bataille, Huppert is the polymorphically perverse mother of a devoutly religious 17 year old son, who comes to visit her at the parental home on a tropical island in the Canaries — which turns out to be a wall-to-wall den of iniquity of the kind Henry Miller would rub his palms over in glee. Mother, Helène, disappears for days at a time to engage in disgustingly perverse sex orgies with her "girlfriend" (mistress) Rea, whose limitless bag of sexual tricks includes oral-anal osculation and anything else you can think off — SM lashings, foot and boot fetishism – you-name-it – she does it. The son, Pierre (hawk-nosed, bushy-haired, Louis Garrel) is clearly a second-generation pervert in the making, but is sorely inhibited by his religious instincts. Helene makes no secret of her natural inclinations, and tries to protect her son from following suite by making it clear to him, in no uncertain terms, what a disgusting amoral libertine mother she is. Poor Pierre is at first appalled, but eventually fascinated and drawn into his beautiful mother's web of depravity. Maman now unleashes bi-sexual lover Rea on son to teach him the ropes of unfettered carnal gratification.Multiple gang-bangs with Maman and friends ensue, whereupon in an effort to ward off impending incest –(there is still a tattered shred of morality alive in her, somewhere) – Helene sics another lovely young libertine, Hansi (honey blonde beauty Emma de Caunes), on hapless young Pierre, in the hope that this "normal" relationship will straighten him out. Wrong again – Hansi actually falls in love with the by now terribly confused lad, but her idea of straightening him out is to draw him into a brutal sado-masochistic episode, which totally freaks him out. Meanwhile, Mother, who has departed, theoretically for good, finds herself longing to see son once more. Their fatal attraction is finally consummated in a hospital room as Helene stabs herself to death in medio-coito, and Pierre furiously masturbates over her dead body as a perverse looking doctor pulls him away."Ma Mère" is not for the faint-hearted film aesthete, nor would it be anything but confusing for the hard-core porn aficionado crowd either. It is rather an addition to the current school of taboo-busting French confrontational cinema, as championed by such in-your-face film- makers as Catherine Breillat, whose "Anatomie de l'enfer" provoked large scale walkouts at a Market screening of case hardened viewers in Berlin earlier this year. Nevertheless, "La Mere", beautifully shot in hard-edge color, manages to be both revolting and thought provoking at the same time, but could never have achieved such a level of interest without the immensely intelligent performance and mesmerizing physical appeal of anyone but Isabelle Huppert in the title role. The film was turned down by Cannes but screened at the Taormina, Moscow, Toronto, and Chicago festivals. Where it goes next is anybody's guess, but it was the discovery of the London fest for this reviewer.

Everybody in this film is a nut job...but not in a 'cool, interesting' kinda way, in a 'trying to hard to be crazy for attention purposes' fashion. The story is ridiculous and the scenarios are just utterly boring. It seems disjointed, perhaps intentionally, but combined with the fact that there is no opportunity to build any kind of empathy with any of the characters there is nothing to engage the viewer's interest. It's clear from the cover and the first few scenes what the big shocker is, and when it happens (or any other sex scene for that matter) it's just dishwater dull. If you have the opportunity to watch this, don't. I have nothing more to say about this tripe but IMDb is insisting on another two lines in the review, so here they are.