Mother And Son

I’m a promo bias regarding the Picturehouse brand. The discovery and rediscovery strands make up the bulk of my movie-going. It’s reflected in this site. It also puts me in front of films I would miss. When it comes to time and money, I only invest in seeing what’s on at the time. Hence You often see reviews from me about “zombie shooter and Cleavage Katana in phase 6 of the multi-bore fanfic.”

So I went into Mother and Son completely uninformed and needed to know when or where I would be. Ironically I found myself with three people who remind me of me.

We are like the Family, Ostensibly dropped into France. A mother and two brothers, one 11+ and the other about 7, living in a small cupboard with family and friends. We know they are migrants, and effectively in some form of second-class citizenship, but all we have to go on is them. A family. One brief byline of 1989, and I knew exactly where I was. With my mother, who was a cleaner, and my teen brother, just being pushed to enjoy and write the eBay of life on an almost toxic level and to exceed, albeit here specifically academically.

The film’s strength is its ability to show the truths of such a life without judgement or exposition. We move with a voiceover from a now Ernest, but we see the parts of their lives he would never have seen as a child. Through Rose, then Jean and finally Earnest. The relationship with race and opportunity and standing change, but their role as family doesn’t.

It did make me think more of what I had as a family they did not. My father was away often but was present when he could be. Jean and Earnest have other brothers but have yet to make the journey. Our relatives from Ireland and India came and went frequently in my pre-pandemic times.

The actors catch a familial intimacy that we rarely see on the camera. The polyfill ness with each other and the chin on shoulder arm overhead intertwining that really comes from family helps cement the issues they overcome. Often matter as factly, often through denial and anger.

As Rose makes changes to create opportunities for her sons, her sons, in turn, can adapt or define themselves against them.

I studied in Paris in the ’90s. I was there when Jean’s story was told. It made me understand something I only had but couldn’t articulate. When I was in Nanterre, Black students were conspicuous by their absence compared to me in Essex. I don’t mean in terms of individuals. I had a flare, mate. There was that guy I tended to see when I got my lunch. But that’s not being with anyone; that’s counting. I mean, I never saw our societies, No black or Nigerian society. No afro Caribbean.

Jean finds the most challenging role. As much a father as a brother to Ernest, and finding himself at his prime of defining himself with responsibilities to maintain and a lack of consistency from his mother, his tale is frustrated and ham strung despite his qualities.

But our narrator. Ernesto realises that even today. Liberty is a probation for himself and for many. Even in the only nation, he has ever indeed known. See this in the cinema and leave the katana for the streams.