Jamie passion and passionfruit!

Ma mére

We get in way deep here!  Isabelle Huppert and another of her over the top characters – this time a mother and prostitute with a taste for incest, S and M, lesbian lovers and the like.  Into this world comes her 17 year old son Pierre fresh from boarding school and ready to be initiated into the world of sex, or rather his mother’s world if she has anything to do with it.  The setting is the Canary Islands and specifically Maspalomas a mecca for the drunken, sex-starved holidaymakers.  Mum lives in a comfortable flat there – even more so with hubby out of the way and she goes out every night part business, part pleasure.  To cut a long story short, Pierre is forced to confront his own sexual demons, his religious education at school, the role of mother in his life, what she does with others, what she wants him to do and what she wants for herself all in a rather seedy hedonistic resort.  For me, the best thing about this adaptation of a scandalous French book of the sixties is the morbid perversity of the people there that I suspect in this age of cyberporn is more of a fantasy turned reality than we may think.  It certainly doesn’t seem like so much fun ultimately.  The story itself and the film is adequately interesting but only just and some may be shocked by some of the sex acts but like Isabelle does in most of the film you can keep a distance.

Huppert is always great but has little to do in this film compared to some of her other weirdo roles.  Louis Garrel does the honours as her son and shows that he is capable of holding a movie together.  Other than that little to say.  A film for the curious which doesn’t say very much really and doesn’t attract too much.

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