‘Mother and Son’ Film Review: Intimate Immigration Drama Spans Decades
thewrap.comHere’s a fun bit of symmetry: Of the four French titles competing for this year’s Palme d’Or, the first to screen was “Brother and Sister” and the last was “Mother and Son.” (Presumably daughters and grandparents will get their due next year.) Of the two, “Mother and Son” director Léonor Serraille bests her colleague Arnaud Desplechin in the family-saga sweepstakes, delivering a decade-spanning immigration drama that plays on the most intimate of registers.The film closed out the Cannes competition on Friday, providing it an auspicious berth.
This year’s jury will go into deliberations with actress Annabelle Lengronne fresh in mind; should the actress win, she won’t have far to travel.She isn’t entirely the lead, as the triptych follows a Franco-Ivorian family in chapters dedicated to each member.
We open in 1989 on Rose (Lengronne), a young mother of four who leaves her two oldest children behind when she and her two other sons resettle in France.
Finding lodging in her cousins’ already cramped apartment and landing work as a maid in a downmarket hotel, Rose instills in her two boys the immigrant ethos: Work hard, work even harder, keep your head down and assimilate.“Mother and Sons,” at least in chapter one, has less interest in wider social drama than in the characters’ inner worlds.
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