Saturday, May 22, 2010
M IS FOR THE MANY THINGS SHE GAVE ME, O IS FOR........
Today's Christophe Honoré was
An estranged Dad dies, a son goes to live with his mother at the old family place, the mom is a dissolute sybarite. Is that the right word? She says she is a slut.
The son is shocked that the Mom wants him to get over his rigid French Catholic points of view and introduces him into kinky sex as a way to get him over his education as well as his longing for his father.
Call Dr. Freud.
The thing is that this film is quite beautifully done but it has a really rotten book or script.
The actors and the director do their best with this but the deal is that depravity had better be funny or fun or it is deadly boring. So serious. And they don't know which to be.
The kid gets to try everything although there is little enough homosexuality in it for my taste.
I skipped ahead and probably missed the "good parts". Well some of them because the bad parts were bad.
It is strange that Honoré who has such a light and loving touch in all his other films was unable to lighten this up to make it a bit more amusing or to be able to infuse one bit of love into the depravity.
Of course, then it wouldn't be depraved and the finalé would not make any sense at all. Not that it does this way.
Too bad. Every director needs a dud and this one is Honoré's.
But the Canary Islands are pretty and so are the young people that Mom gets to play with her son.
Isabelle Huppert is the Mom and she is, as usual, fine in a part that is on the edge and beyond. The review says that she has shot the moon on this one. I would say she jumped the shark. Over the edge.
I will give it a 1 out of Netflix5.
Labels: films
