Another day, another film festival! This French-Canadian comedy-drama, an affectionate tribute to motherly devotion and love, is playing in Melbourne as a part of the Jewish International Film Festival.
The film’s original French title, My Mother, God, And Sylvie Vartan, is also the title of the autobiographical novel by Roland Perez, a French lawyer and broadcaster whose memoir inspired this movie. It opens in 1963 Paris, where Esther (Leïla Bekhti), a Jewish immigrant from Morocco, is about to give birth to her sixth child. Good news: Esther’s family is now entitled to social housing. Bad news: little Roland is born with a club foot.
The doctors tell Roland’s parents that he’ll never be able to walk, but they probably never met a mother like Esther, a stubborn and fiery woman who is determined that her son will have the best and most fabulous life. She is ready to fight the medical diagnosis and the social worker who is quite understandably concerned about the boy, confined to crawling on the floor of the family apartment and in danger of missing out on school and proper socialisation.
Esther’s belief in a miracle is so unwavering that at times she comes off as just plain delusional, but eventually her faith pays off against all odds. She finds an unconventional therapist who offers a drastic method of correcting Roland’s foot, involving a very long stay in bed. Roland’s ordeal is made tolerable by the soothing voice of Sylvie Vartan, a popular French pop singer; he adores Sylvie so he even mimics her famous tooth gap with the help of black marker.
I assumed from the synopsis that Esther’s fight for her son is what the entire film is about, but it’s only half of the story. The second half, chronicling Roland’s adult life, shows the flip side of the intense maternal devotion. Roland, now played by Jonathan Cohen, often finds his mother’s behaviour suffocating, and he struggles to cut the umbilical cord and separate himself from her. This mix of love and exasperation is very recognisable, even if you don’t have a full-on mother like Esther. Interestingly, I can’t think of that many films focused on the relationship between mothers and grown-up sons, even if domineering mothers are a pretty common staple in cinema, and a popular obstacle in romantic movies.
Roland also crosses paths with his beloved childhood idol Sylvie, first as a journalist and later as a lawyer. He’s careful to hide the true depth of his fandom from her, which he understands can create a wrong impression. Real-life Sylvie Vartan actually shows up to play an older version of herself.
Director Ken Scott keeps things light and breezy, and the movie is very much a funny, big-hearted and emotional crowd-pleaser. There were clearly some culturally specific in-jokes that I missed, but which got an appreciative response from the Jewish audience members in my cinema. I enjoyed the vibrant and nostalgic re-creation of the 60s, and Leïla Bekhti is a force of nature as a fierce mother whose love knows no bounds. The only serious failing I can think of is that the film’s supporting cast, including Roland’s father, siblings, and later his wife and children, all feel severely shortchanged. It’s not a deal-breaker in a movie that’s carried by its central relationship, but a bit more depth and shade for the supporting characters would have been welcome.
yggdrasille.com 