Madres & Hijas

What saves this film from deteriorating into a banal tear-jerker about how a proper Christian mother would never give up her child is the objective directing and realistic acting performances. Several decades of the protagonist’s life and the major “transgression” that has haunted her since her youth are presented with brutal simplicity in just a few opening shots. With its story structure comprising three separately unfolding plot levels, Mother and Child is reminiscent of the more drastic dramas of Alejandro González Iñárritu, the film’s executive producer. The non-romantic physiological approach to the sexual act brought back memories of the series Tell Me You Love Me, one of whose episodes was directed by Rodrigo García, which I hadn’t previously known. García also directed several episodes of In Treatment, which could explain the psychoanalytical nature of the film. Major dramas play out in long shots filmed with a camera that barely moves at all. But not melodramatically, at least not on the surface. The characters don’t have to scream at each other and go through terrible agony (seriously, Alejandro) in order for us to understand how they are fiercely trying to find their place in life and how they are tormented by their inability to do so. Whereas other films irritate me with their female protagonists’ carelessness in seeking and offering physical pleasure, the sex in Mother and Child struck me as a natural part of the plot development grounded in psychology. Though the final tying-up of loose ends is not 100% believable (there are somehow too many coincidences all at once), the film contains enough authentic moments, when I fully sympathised with the characters, to forgive the screenwriters for their soft-heartedness. Fate is not so merciful. 75% (12.12.2012)