Review of Mommy (2014) by Matt C — 05 Feb 2015

Other than some pacing issues, Mommy is a movie that made me happy that I went a good distance out of my way to see it. Full of fantastic performances and some truly visually striking sequences, it's in turns beautiful and heartbreaking.

For being a 138 minutes, it's pretty well paced and its use of a never-used square 1:1 aspect ratio is shockingly never distracting, and the little things that they do with it are just terrific in their simplicities.

That's just one of the ways that Mommy is unique without ever being jarring. There are some shades of We Need to Talk About Kevin earlier on, but let me be clear, this is not We Need to Talk About Kevin (despite how incredible that movie is).

It's still challenging, but oddly inviting a way, namely due to its late-'90s/early-2000s music choices and uses of colors. Anne Dorval and Antoine-Oliver Pilon work amazingly as mother and son; observing their similarities is great and the blurring of their simultaneous friendship and antagonistic interactions does a great job of deepening their characters without seeming contradictory.

The fulfill their roles as a struggling mother and a needy, ADHD-inflicted son without being charactertures. The same goes for the film itself, given that it occasionally has a sense of humor that never undermines the drama.

I'm both surprised and disappointed that Mommy didn't get nominated for Best Foreign Language Film for the Oscars (more the latter than the former, because as I've said before, the nominations this year were horrible).

If this plays by you, go and see it. Even if it isn't quite perfect, don't be that person that says, "I don't want to have to read a movie," just because it's in French. It's thoroughly engaging and that never detracts from its technical achievements.

8.5/10, great, one thumb up, definitely above average, etc.