The experience of motherhood is widely romanticised in the Western world. It does not take into account that bearing and raising a child can be a difficult and even traumatic experience. Sleepless nights, insecurity, anger and despair sometimes prevail. This is particularly true if you are a single mother. And this exceptionally evident if you are just 14 years of age, and yourself the daughter of a very young mother. Such is the case of Carla (Carla Quílez), an energetic and vaguely rebellious adolescent living in an institution in the outskirts of Barcelona.
The film opens during a therapy session. Various young mothers describe their difficult motherhood experience. An attentive Carla listens to them. She looks so young that you would easily mistake her for for a child. Except that she is a pregnant from a “good friend” called Ifrain. He is of around the same age, and the child was conceived through consensual sexual interaction. The prospects of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood are daunting. Her mother callously warns her that the pain of giving birth is the biggest one that has ever existed. At first, Carla displays resilience and determination. She does not wish to give up her unborn baby.
Her commitment to motherhood changes once the baby is born. Ifrain (she names the baby after the father) cries a lot, as babies do. Carla cannot come to terms with the fact that the infant will not calm down on her arms. One of the mothers tells her to calm down because the baby can sense her nervousness. Such advice triggers precisely the opposite reaction: Carla becomes extremely angry. This is one of the film’s funniest and also one of the film’s most moving sequences, when the magnificent contradictions of motherhood are candidly exposed. Carla starts to believe that the baby doesn’t love her. She breastfeeds him, bathes him, sings for him and he won’t stop crying. So she becomes overridden with guilt.
The young Quilez is outstanding in the skin of the troubled young mother, and she could easily win the Best Leading Performance Award at this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival. She incorporates the perfect balance of puerile adolescence and premature adulthood. She is resilient and confident with her make-up on, hanging out at local bars and discos. And she becomes a vulnerable child when calls for mommy.
While teeming with honesty, Palomero’s second feature is not without flaws. There are a few plot holes. The director, who also wrote the film script, fails to investigate the psychology of the other young mothers. I could never understand how the institution works and why we barely see the children from the other single mothers. Plus, it isn’t clear why Carla doesn’t live with her mother, since the two have a strong relationship and are intimately connected through the experience of early motherhood. The difference is that her mother did not have the support from her very own mother, who had tragically passed away shortly before she gave birth to Carla. It seems strange that she would place her own daughter in an institution.
The Aragonese filmmaker Pilar Palomero is no stranger to to the topic of girlhood/womanhood. Her debut feature Schoolgirls (2020) investigates the trials and tribulations of an 11-year-old girl grappling with repressive teachings of her convent school. Her sophomore feature, which draws from the real experiences of girls in a Catalonian shelter, has received a very warm welcome, and it will likely reach commercial success beyond Spanish soil.
Motherhood has just premiered at the 70th San Sebastian International Film Festival/ Donostia Zinemadia, when this piece was originally written. It also shows at the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
Dark Heart of the Forest is a modest Belgian tale, handsomely told, bolstered by two keen performances by veteran child actress Elsa Houbenand newcomer Quito Rayon Richter. Playing two young lovers who escape the confines of their care home and run off into the countryside, it explores the full potential of the woods for both rebirth and connection.
Nikolaï (Quito Rayon Richter) has always been an odd duck. Discovered in the forest by social services, he is quickly branded “Mowgli” by the other kids in the home. Meanwhile, Camille (Elsa Houben) appears to be the more put-together one, but she is hiding a second pregnancy that could land her in a lot of trouble. They quickly find each other in the home and decide to run away. Having no real parents themselves, and Camille losing her first baby due to a forced abortion, they want to be the type of good people that their parents never were.
Despite some narrative trickery in the first half— telling essentially the same story twice yet with key variations in both the male and female perspective — there is little in the final story that should surprise, bar the filmmaker choosing to end on either a positive or a tragic note. This is more of a mood and character piece than a conventional tale — for one, the gendarmerie don’t chase them around — taking great detail to capture the awkwardness of teenage love, as well as its elation, contrasted against a world that quickly wants to confine those who don’t fit in.
Living near a forest myself and usually walking there at least once a day with my dog, I have noticed how its entire look can change depending on the time of day, time of year, precipitation level, weather and available sunlight. As the name suggests, cinematographer Virginie Surdej captures the different moods of the forest well, from foreboding light green to malevolent darkness to hope in the form of the sun chinking through the trees. This moody feel is complemented by hazy synths and later, manic violin scales, rising to a crescendo during the film’s pivotal final scenes. Still, by the end it did feel as if the filmmaking team were running out of ways to shoot essentially the same place.
Shooting on handheld widescreen, featuring close-ups of small gestures and facial expressions, director Serge Mirzabekiantz takes great care to pay respect to the teenager’s plight, including teenage sex scenes that don’t come across as exploitative. While the more combative moments between the young and testy couple could’ve been more interestingly rendered, both Houben and Richter bring a fine rawness to their roles and their adolescent difficulties. Together they feel like a believable young couple, with all the attendant naïveté and passion that entails. The woods may be a cold, dank and often miserable place, but with the right person, there appears to be a chance to create something new.
Dark Heart of the Forest plays in the First Feature section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12-28th November.
Mothers give birth, nurture and provide unconditional affection. That’s more or less the fundamental law of nature, and an essential requirement for the nuclear family and traditional society. The reality, of course, is a little different. Mothers aren’t always this caring and benevolent. Many females reject their offspring. Some kill. Sometimes the offspring turns him or herself against the creature that gave birth. The negative repercussions are everywhere: in the demeanour of the child, in the romantic relationships of both the mother and grow-up son/daughter, and all sorts of social interactions. It’s often the disregard for human life, compassion and altruism that prevails.
Cinema has found a myriad of ways of representing the breakdown of the motherly bond and its the devastating impact. Typically, it all begins with the collapse of the female per se. Our society is still profoundly misogynistic, and this is broadly reflected on the silver screen. The woman is associated with hysteria (a word historically and controversially concocted exclusively for females). They are more prone to outbursts and all sorts of dysfunctional behaviour. On the positive side, they are perceived as more caring and sensitive, but these qualities are extremely volatile. A woman’s sanity can be easily defenestrated, and she promptly becomes a wicked witch, a vile bitch or an evil-doer. The doting mother morphs into an ugly and murderous creature.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, early genre theory stated that the monster in horror films is always a female. If the monster looked male, it would be described as a “phallic female”, in good ol’ Freudian language. In a nutshell, the grotesque, heinous, disfigured and inhuman is always female. Man are simply to rational and balanced for that. Quite!
The masters of film have found ingenious ways of representing this emotional breakdown of the female and the consequent failure of motherhood. Some have remained a little more Freudian, painting the woman as sick and dysfunctional, while other have challenged the stereotype, creating very different propositions and solutions to the female enygma. Below is a list of 15 very different and diverse movies about dysfunctional females and failed motherhood. They include a few dirty gems you won’t easily come across otherwise. Avoid this list in case you are feeling broody or simply a little romantic!
The films are listed in alphabetical order. Click on the film title in order to accede to our exclusive film review (where available):
…
.
1. The Antichrist (Lars Von Trier, 2009):
This is your most traditional and conventional – and perhaps misogynistic – take on femininity and motherhood. The Danish director is his usual sadistic and misanthropist self. The unnamed female (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) becomes increasingly erratic and violent after the tragic loss of their child. The man (William Dafoe) has to fend off all the hatred, anguish and resentment vented by his partner. In the end of the movie, we find out the very peculiar reason that drove the woman to insanity.
.
2. Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999):
Middle-age widower Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi) sets up a mock “audition” in order to find a new wife, after much insistence from his son Shigehiko that he begins dating again. He becomes infatuated by the mysterious Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina). They make love, and the female demands that Aoyama pledge his love to her and no one else. But there’s nothing loving and caring – let alone motherly – about Asami. The female has a very sinister side that defies all notions of what a nice housewife and lover should be. The outcome is extremely gruesome, including wire saw, needles and the some of the most profoundly sadistic torture you will ever witness in cinema.
.
3. The Brood (David Cronenberg, 1979):
A group of mutant children are responsible for a number of gruesome murders. It turns out that they are telepathically controlled by their mother Samantha, and that their deadly actions are nothing but the dark wishes of the deranged female. The final scene is truly memorable, as is the revelation of how Samantha has given birth to these horrific creatures. The graphic “birth” sequence will put you off naked females for a long time. No less significant is the fact that Cronenberg was going through an acrimonious divorce battle with his wife, and Samantha is a fitting “tribute” to his estranged partner.
The Brood is also pictured at the top of this article.
The pain of losing a child can drive a mother to very extreme actions. Sophia (Catherine Walker) is overwhelmed with sadness since the death of her young boy. She is determined to make contact with his soul at all costs. She hires a big mansion in the Irish forests and hires an occultist with experience in black magic called Solomon in order to communicate with her dead son. The outcome, however, isn’t quite what she expected, malign forces being unleashed. Perhaps Sophia should have found a less unorthodox way of coming to terms with her interrupted motherhood experience. This is an intense horror movie and also a trip into Irish occultism.
This bizarre and elegant tale of gore and horror is not for the faint-hearted and squeamish. The helmer torture viewers with plenty of mutilated bodies, sadistic pleasures and – above everything else – deeply dysfunctional and psychotic females. All blended with a little bit of TLC, maternal warmth and lesbian affection,
A mother (Diana Agostini), who was previously an eye surgeon in Portugal, lives with her husband and their young daughter Francisca (Kika Magalhães) in a secluded farm somewhere in the remote American countryside. She gives her daughter anatomy lessons from a very young age, probably unaware that Francisca would soon use her acquired skills in the most unorthodox ways imaginable.
This an unusual, bizarre and, at the same time, extremely tender Brazilian horror movie. It starts out as an awkward domestic drama, as the gorgeous, upper-class, white and pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano) hires the black babysitter Clara (Isabél Zuaa). The relationship of the two women slowly morph into something else. And so does the unborn baby!
The subject of interrupted motherhood and isolation from society become central to the story, which takes a very unexpected twist roughly in the middle of the 127-minute narrative. Derivative elements are deftly combined in order to create a film with a singular identity, extraordinarily original in its format. Violence here acquires a fantastic dimension. Blood isn’t repulsive; it’s instead the ultimate maternal link. Meat is not murder.
.
7. In The Basement (Ulrich Seidl, 2014):
In this Austrian every bleak and stern documentary, the country’s enfant terrible of the cinema world explores some of the most disturbing obsessions of his countrymen and women. He goes down real people’s basement to reveal a collections deadly guns, Nazi memorabilia, bizarrre sex toys and instruments and… a very eerie woman who coos over a lifesize latex model baby. Or is it a mummified version of her dead child? Her affection seems to be very real. Motherhood, on the other hand, is an elusive concept, while reality is indeed very freakish.
Mother Russia has failed it children. It has neglected and relegated them to a life without hope and love. The latest movie by Andrey Zvyagintsev, possibly the biggest exponent in Russia cinema right now, is a bleak allegory of his home country.
In Loveless, both mother and father disregard their son, who suddenly goes missing without leaving a trace. But it’s the mother Zhenya who has the most graphic and jarring description of parenthood. She despises her son for nearly “cleaving her in twain at birth”, and she simply cannot stand his very sight.
This is as pathologically graphic as motherhood gets. Ayka is an illegal immigrant in Russia, and she has abandoned her newborn baby in hospital because she has to means of looking after it. But then her body plays tricks on her. Blood prevails in the first half of the movie. Due to child labour, Aika is haemorrhaging large amounts of the liquid, which doesn’t prevent her from walking around the city, using public transport and even working. The second half of the film is soaked in maternal milk. Aika stops bleeding after seeing a gynaecologist, but the doctor also tells her that she’s lactating and could develop matitis if she doesn’t breastfeed. Are these signs that Ayka should return to hospital and retrieve her child? The film closure is as shocking as Ayka’s entire predicament.
10. Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981):
A scrawny, pale and neurotic Anna (played by Isabelle Adjani, in a performance of a lifetime) begins a romantic and very sexual relationship with an alien, which slowly replaces her loving husband Mark. This likely is most absurd tale of love and adultery you will ever see, and an often overlooked dirty gem of cinema.
The movie includes a very graphic sex scene with the strange creature, which progressively morphs into a human being. There is also a miscarriage in a subway passage, where Adjani screams and ejects liquids from pretty much every orifice of her body. Once again, we should be grateful this baby was never born.
Akin to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Alice Lowe’s directorial and writing debut uses the horror genre as a vice to explore femininity and pregnancy’s isolation. Unlike numerous egotistical star driven directorial debuts, Prevenge is a strange concoction of the slasher horror and comedy – making for a truly original recipe of British independent filmmaking. Mum-to-be Ruth develops a taste for blood, which seems to be related to her unborn child. Her actions culminate in stunningly grotesque murders.
Alice Lowe’s straight-faced performance is all the more impressive when considering the actor/writer/director was seven months pregnant when filming the role. Her ability to create awkwardness in a scene lends itself well to her script-writing.
.
12. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960):
The titular “Oh mother, mother, what have you done?” has become emblematic of the most twisted and psychotic mother-son bond ever. Norman Bates’s mother is possessive, jealous and murderous. Except that mother, of course, isn’t mother at all! Hitchcock’s masterpiece is a dirty ode to all females who – unlike Mrs Bates – do not wish to become a taxiderm.
.
13. Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965):
Hopefully you won’t meet a female this rabid anytime in your life. Carols Ledoux (played by 22-year-old Catherine Deneuve) is extremely beautiful and attractive. She begins a dalliance with a charming and well-meaning gentleman called Colin (John Fraser). However, the titular repulsion kicks in and Carol becomes deranged before any sort of carnal interaction comes to fruition. Thankfully for her offspring, Carol never becomes a mother!
.
14. Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968):
This is the ultimate gaslighting horror tale. Polanski’s masterpiece depicts Rosemary Woodhouse’s (Mia Farrow) descent into panic and neurosis after suspecting that there is something wrong with her pregnancy. She believes that her husband Guy (John Cassavetes) is conspiring with her neighbours, and that her baby isn’t quite what she expects. But is Rosemary going mad or is there something supernatural taking place? In other words, is every impregnated female a little insane? Well, most of us know the film ending and the answer. And it’s not pretty!
.
15. Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014):
In this British science fiction flick set in Scotland, a female alien who perfectly mimics humans and picks us random men, who eventually meet a horrific fate. The otherworldly female is both erotic and scary. The other actors are mostly non-professionals and much of the action was captured with hidden cameras, giving the film a creepy naturalistic feel. This alien does not conceive any children. Instead, she seems to embody the very opposite of motherhood: cold, deceitful and deadly.
.
These films were selected by Victor Fraga and Alex Babboni. This article is a published in a partnership with Doesn’t Exist Magazine. It is only available online (not on print).
