The London Film Festival has ended its 16 day run with more of a whimper than a bang, closing out with a gala screening of the inconsequential comedy, “I Heart Huckabee”, which failed to attract the usual flow of celebrities on a chilly Thursday Night in Leicester Square. An alternate last-night screening, “MA MERE”, a socio-pathological shocker from France, starring one of the best of all Gallic actresses, Isabelle Huppert turned out to be a better festival capstone than “Huckabee” could possibly have been. I went in knowing nothing about the film except that it was an 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 Festival, 2004.
Isabelle Huppert is living monster-sacre 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 Honore and based on a 1977 neo-Rabelaisian novel by Georges Bataille, Huppert is the polymorphically perverse mother of a 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, Helene, 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.

It must be said that “La Mere” 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. Oddly enough, Huppert was also in the “Huckabees” film, which I fortunately missed – the only reason I can think of for bothering to see it one of these days.

Alex Deleon