MOTHER’S day : who too embraces embraces evil – Critical

For his latest film, MOTHER’S day, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar is a tribute to mothers with this day that celebrates them, sometimes happy, sometimes a source of tensions, but never indifferent.

Many films have already been made about mothers, the love or the hatred they inspire in their children. But also look more or less benevolent, which they wear on their offspring. Not to mention the crucial influence they have in the lives of their children, even and especially when they become parents in their turn. By contrast, it is more unlikely to take Mother’s day as a starting point, with its history, its symbol is sometimes hijacked, the tensions that go with it, its issues, and its amoral trade. Director Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar , in fact, its red thread in THEA FEAST OF MOTHERS, his fifth feature film, which comes opportunely on the eve of this feast. Motherhood and the relationship to the mother are often at the heart of the work of the producer become a director. As in The heaven will be waiting on more of sulphur, or its last production with The Laughter of my mother of Colombe Savignac and Pascal Ralite.We met Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar during the presentation of his film in Bordeaux accompanied by Pascale Arbillot and Olivia Côte. The filmmaker wanted to make “a film by transmission and reconciliation, on this report at the time that each child has with his mother, settling accounts with it before his death, under penalty of regrets, painful and bitter“. Movie, Pascale Arbillot describes as the “inbox repair tool, showing non-judgmental mothers imperfect“. Two stories predominate in THE MOTHER’s day, which are the aggregation of all the others: “that of these three sisters who have an approach, a sensitivity and pain in the different face of their mother, and that of the President of the Republic undermined by her status as a mother”.

Yet, despite such beautiful and good intentions, THE MOTHER’s day disappoints. One is found drowned in the multitude of characters, who meet and talk to, without necessarily being aware of, in the type of choral film that fond of Claude Lelouch (to Each his life). The concern with this process is that we don’t have the time to attach it permanently to the characters, or feel true empathy for them. Some are also superfétatoires and their only interest is to highlight key. Their characters, their stories and their feelings are too touched and their link with the common subject matter of the film does not compensate for the glaring lack of global scenario. It is caught up in a species of whirlwind, whose convolutions, the cross and the dialogues of all the characters clearly give the dizzy.

By sinning by excess of wanting too much to make well, MOTHER’S day is irrepressibly think of the proverb, “Who embraces too much embraces evil.”

One has the impression that the director and scriptwriter has made the exhaustive inventory of all the situations that a mother and her child would have to meet in their life, and placed it in his film, putting plenty of commonplaces and clichés most annoying. She defends, however, arguing that this “living subject so vast and without end might be a subject for a series“.

Judge for yourself. The mother is omnipotent (Marie-Christine Barrault), who was marked for life her daughters, suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, definitely very inspiring to film at this time (The Final). The three women are dealing, each in its own way, the memories in which plunges the state of their mother. As well, Nathalie does not want to forgive, or to have a child. Nathalie is played by Olivia Coast, more accustomed to the roles of comedy (Dropped). It is very compelling and especially moving in his first real dramatic role. The director, who sees “the actors as instruments of music” had the very good idea of the choose to “offer him a different partition and allow it to go get with her the things that she has in it and you look all of a sudden like for the first time”. Film that the actress is “beautiful in its way to try to fight this tension that exists in the relationship of the girls with their mother, because there is still love”.Nathalie has two sisters, one of which wants to adopt (Pascale Arbillot), and the other journalist (Clotilde Courau) entrusts the education of his two children to a nanny (Carmen Maura), related very closely to the President of the Republic (Audrey Fleurot). It may rely on her husband (Gustave Kervern) for the help through this ordeal of post-partum depression. Nathalie teaches courses in art (including Anna Jarvis, famous inventor american Mother’s day) and fell in love with one of his students, who dance in the company of an actress (Nicole Garcia), who has a son too now (Vincent Dedienne), whose girlfriend (Noémie Merlant) is working with his uncle (Pascal Demolon), who is reluctant to have a child with her companion. Phew!

Despite some nice scenes and emotions that take to the throat by surprise, and beautiful moments that underline skillfully the symbolism of the complexity of motherhood and the relation to time, THE MOTHER’s day fishing especially on the side of wanting too much to do, to the image of the proverb That too much embraces embraces evil.

Sylvie-Noelle

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