Moth­er and Son – first-look review

Léonor Ser­raille loves head­strong, emo­tion­al women. The French direc­tor burst onto the Cannes scene when, in 2017, she won the Cam­era d’Or (the prize for the best first fea­ture) with her debut, Jeune Femme, star­ring Laeti­tia Dosch as a new­ly sin­gle red­head spread­ing chaos across Paris.

This time, the charm­ing whirl­wind at the core is Annabelle Lengronne’s Rose, a sin­gle moth­er who arrives in Paris from the Ivory Coast in 1989 with two small boys under her arm and oth­er sons left behind at home. Unlike the cau­tious rel­a­tives who offers the trio a tem­po­rary home, Rose is instant­ly open to the thrills avail­able to the beau­ti­ful and viva­cious woman she is, and, when not work­ing as a hotel clean­er, she enjoys an abun­dant sex life.

Moth­er and Son has a nov­el­is­tic scope, with an open­ing voice-over from Rose’s youngest son, Ernest, cre­at­ing a por­tent of the tri­als to come for this immi­grant fam­i­ly. He is five when the film opens and 25 by the time the cur­tain falls. Their for­tunes are depen­dent on the men drawn to Rose, hence the move from Paris to Rouen in the wake of a rich white man tak­ing an inter­est. From this point, focus switch­es from the charis­mat­ic Legronne cap­tured in a fre­net­ic shoot­ing style, to the boys, ten years lat­er, as they attempt to look after them­selves, for Rose lives in Paris dur­ing the week so as to con­tin­ue working.

There are shades of the 1937 Bar­bara Stan­wyck tear­jerk­er, Stel­la Dal­las, to Rose’s desire for her chil­dren to make good irre­spec­tive of what hap­pens to her. Lengronne’s gut­sy emo­tion­al per­for­mance weath­ers twen­ty years, doing lay­ered work as she puts her strongest side for­ward for her kids. In one cap­ti­vat­ing scene, Jean spies on her as she goes from danc­ing alone, drink­ing a beer and smok­ing, to break­ing down in tears. The pre­cise nature of her sor­row is left obscure, as the cam­era stays aligned to the per­spec­tive of her watch­ing child.

Inten­si­ty dimin­ish­es as the focus switch­es to the broth­ers for chap­ters titled ​‘Jean’ and ​‘Ernest’. We watch as old­er broth­er Jean trans­forms from a promis­ing A‑student with dreams of becom­ing a pilot to a reck­less teen, con­fused about his place in the world. The com­plex­i­ty of com­ing-of-age as a Black teenag­er with no father and an errat­ic moth­er are implied to be the rea­son for Jean’s spi­ral. How­ev­er the film favours vague allu­sion rather than raw speci­fici­ty and strays into famil­iar angry young man ter­rain, despite a com­mit­ted per­for­mance by Stéphane Bak.

Ernest is forged by bear­ing wit­ness to the fol­lies of his moth­er and broth­er. The final chap­ter finds him as a 25-year-old phi­los­o­phy teacher (Ahmed Syl­la), seem­ing­ly an immi­grant suc­cess sto­ry. Rose vis­its him for a lengthy two-han­der that lays bare the heartache and cost of ​“mak­ing it” in a coun­try that has defeat­ed one’s near­est and dear­est. Yet the writ­ing can­not match the poignan­cy of Lengronne’s per­for­mance. Her emo­tion­al imme­di­a­cy is more inter­est­ing than the epic, yet com­par­a­tive­ly mut­ed scope of the film.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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