Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

With a poll coming up on IMDbs Classic Film Board for the best movies of 2004,I decided to have a look on Ebay for DVDs of titles from that year,and I stumbled across a fascinating-looking French flick,which led to me getting ready to meet this rather strange sounding mother.The plot:Since having barely spent any time together since she and her husband separated, Hélène and her son Pierre find themselves struggling to find much in common.Wanting to introduce Pierre to her party life style, Hélène decides to organise a holiday for them to go on.Just before they set off,tragic news reaches them that Pierre's dad/ Hélène ex-husband has suddenly died.Badly hit by the news,Pierre closes himself off from life,and from his mothers plans.Feeling that her son needs to let himself go, Hélène decides to do the thing that any parent would do in this situation,arrange for her "friends with benefits" to take his virginity,and to introduce Pierre to the vicious world of S&M.View on the film:Keeping the film placed at Pierre's point of view,writer/director Christophe Honoré superbly uses,long,stilted grainy close-ups to show the increasing (uncomfortable) level of intimacy that mum & son have for each other.Along with the good use of close-ups, Honoré films the explicit sex scenes in a blunt,to the point manner,with the lack of any music score, (apart from the jet-black Comedy ending) allowing for ever grunt and whip-slashing to be heard & felt.Adapting Georges Bataille's unfinished novel,the screenplay by Christophe Honoré takes advantage in the first half of the film's close-ups by showing a sense of warped intimacy grow between Hélène & Pierre,with Pierre becoming very,very interested in being as intimate with his mum as possible! For the second half of the title, Honoré keeps the mum & son largely apart,and whilst this does allow for Pierre's unpleasant sexual urges to be fully shown,it leads to the movie being unsure over what direction to go in,due to the relationship between Pierre & Hélène being moved from the centre.Leaving nothing to the imagination, Louis Garrel gives a raw performance as Pierre,with Garrel's sweet,innocent face being able to keep some level of support towards Pierre,even when his sexual desires (which Garrel perfectly performers with a real openness) become increasingly damaged. Looking rather alluring, Isabelle Huppert gives an excellent performance as Hélène.Giving Hélène a dominating swagger which allows her to dominate over any sexual partner, Huppert shows a tremendous coldness towards Pierre,which acts as a real friction to Hélène & Pierre incest desires,as Pierre finds everything out about his mother.

This movie stole 2 hours of my life and I want them back! I kept watching, hoping against hope, that something would happen in the film to redeem itself, but alas, it was not to be. Watching this movie is the cinematic equivalent of a root canal. And for a movie so full of sex, this is about the least erotic thing I can imagine.While Isabelle Huppert is an undeniably talented and beautiful actress, I can not comprehend what would possess her to star in a film like this. This movie is full of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things, for no discernible reason other than to annoy the viewer. None of the characters are remotely realistic, and their actions and motivations make no sense. In a real world, Isabelle Huppert's character would have been imprisoned and/or institutionalized.The basic story is this: boy goes to live with his parents, dad dies, son pees all over his dad's stuff and masturbates, mom sniffs her son's butt, mom decides to introduce son to a world of sexual deviance and perversion (including participating in group sex with him), mom decides she should leave before the two of them actually have sex (but she conveniently leaves a whore behind for son to fall in love with), mom continues her career as a prostitute, son and whore whip the local restaurateur and cry, mom comes home to cause more trouble, and then mom dies and son masturbates at her coffin.There, I just saved you two hours and quite a few brain cells.

A cinematic version of a world Michel Houellebecq would be familiar with: despondent, cynical middle-aged has-beens lounging around Gran Canaria with its alien landscape beaches and urine-stained town centre in pursuit of sex, irrespective of its foul, loveless origin.Trying to find their way inamongst this existential trash-compactor are a handful of young-uns. Principally we are 'concerned' with Pierre (Louis Garrel) fighting the Oedipal constraints of his life with great breastbeating melodrama. Garrel looks like Bjørn Andresen, the boy-object of desire from Visconti's Death in Venice, and the film has the same fixation with choleric, seaside end-of-days as well as the same wobbly snap-zooms.I think Huppert sticks out awkwardly in this film, but that could very well be the role she needs to fulfil. Once again, sensible critical appraisal of her contribution is very difficult. As for the rest of the cast, full marks for commitment in a project that has the look but not the coherence or poise to do itself justice. 5/10

This is the worst film I've seen since Gigli. Little or no indication is given of why the male protagonist involves himself in all the sexual depravity his mother introduces him to, which makes all the explicit and unpleasant sex scenes gratuitous and pornographic. The script is uninteresting and unfunny, and the camera-work is nothing to write home about. The film's only redeeming feature is the gorgeous love interest, called Hansie I think, played by Antoine off Eurotrash's daughter. I didn't like Isabelle Huppert's other bad-sex movie, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher), but Ma Mere easily trumps it for complete badness by making all the sex, befoulment, incest and masturbation over coffins entirely gratuitous. If this is the best these people can produce, then they shouldn't have been making films, and George Bataille should have stuck to being a librarian. This is a dire film, right up there with Ishtar, but too unpleasant for the 'so bad it's good' market. Avoid, avoid, avoid.