Tag Archives: mother daughter movies

Mother-Daughter Movies

It’s time for Thursday movie picks! This week we’re covering movies featuring mother-daughter relationships, which means I for one have been through about 6 boxes of tissues while deciding which are my absolute favourites. Thanks once again to spectacular blogger Wandering Through the Shelves for hosting this weekly meeting of the minds.

Matt

While I’m relieved not to be watching live-action fairy tales or YA movies anymore, this was harder than I thought. About a month ago, I had no trouble making a list of classic father-son dynamics but to mother-daughter relationships- that call for not one but two great roles for women- are a little harder to find in Hollywood.

Mamma Mia! At first, my strategy was to name as many Meryl Streep and Diane Keaton movies as I could. This only got me a third of the way there when I remembered Mamma Mia!, the only American movie on my list. Judge me all you want but I love this musical. Yes, the cast was clearly chosen for their comic timing and definitely not their singing voices but their energy with the help of lots of Abba music make this a party I wish I was at. When searching for the father she never knew, a 20 year-old soon-to-be bride comes to realize how little she appreciated the mother who brought her up all by herself.

Jay: Consider yourself judged, Matt.

The Piano Teacher The dynamic between mother and daughter can be as messed up as any and who better to explore just how bad it can get than Austrian director Michel Hanake. Never afraid to make his audience squirm, Hanake (Funny Games) cast Annie Giradot as a mom that makes Carrie’s look permissive. Isabelle Huppert plays a forty-something pianist who shares not only an apartment but a bed with her controlling, perfectionist, and manipulative mother. All this withholding and repression leads to some pretty bizarre behaviour when the daughter meets a young man that she can’t help but be attracted to. Watching it can be an uncomfortable experience but it’s never dull and is sure to inspire lively discussions- even debates.

Volver Penelope Cruz got her first Oscar nomination for Pedro Almodovar’s 2006 Spanish comedy-drama. Carmen Maura plays mother to both Cruz and Lola Duenas, seemingly back from the dead to seek the forgiveness of her estranged daughter. There’s some serious stuff here but Volver is also surprisingly funny. It’s a hard film to categorize but an easy one to love.

Sean

Terms of Endearment – I saw this movie for the first time yesterday and right away I wondered how I had not seen it before. The opening credits contain so many recognizable names and everyone lives up to expectations. It is not an easy movie to watch because it seems so real. It’s not often a happy movie but it’s so genuine and for that reason above all else I think it will stick with me for a while. I highly recommend it to anyone else who hasn’t seen it.

Spanglish I didn’t even realize until now that this was also written and directed by James L. Brooks (just like Terms of Endearment). Score two for him because this movie is also fantastic. Like Terms of Endearment, it is also not very happy but comparing these movies is a disservice to both. Spanglish stands on its own as a story of true love and sacrifice. Just don’t watch these two movies back to back as you may never recover from all the heartbreak.

Jay: I can’t believe I let you do this one! I love Spanglish because their cultural isolation really pits the two of them against the world. Even when they occasionally hate each other, they’re still each other’s entire universe, and when other options start to present themselves, this mother is prepared to make the hard choices. You know this movie gets me every time, to see how close the mother gets to love and fulfillment but turns her back on it because she knows it’s best for her daughter.

Freaky Friday (1976) The third slot was a tough one because while I watched several other mother-daughter movies this week, I felt the other tearjerkers didn’t hit the mark. I went another way. I have to make 100% clear that this is the original Freaky Friday, not the remake. I did not see this movie as a kid, mainly because I confused it with the Friday the 13th series and horror movies terrified me. It’s very dated but it’s fun to see a young Jodie Foster try to act like a regular kid and then do a very accurate impression of herself as adult who happens to be pretending to be a regular kid.

Jay

I’m having a tough time paring down this list. I watched Autumn Sonata (Ingrid fucking Bergman!) which succeeds in being uncomfortable and intense despite subtitles. And I watched Imitation of Life, which pitted parenting styles against each other with equally depressing results. And I watched Because I Said So because frankly, how could I not? As Matt pointed out, Diane Keaton is just screaming to be on this list, and this film with 3 sisters and a meddling mother is a comforting exercise in voyeurism. And Pixar’s Brave – I love the circularity in that relationship, the growth experienced by both women and the understanding that comes with it. And The Kids Are All Right – there’s so much here in terms of a family coming to terms with shifting roles, and it’s striking how much the two mothers complement each other. And Sherrybaby. And Easy A (love Patricia Clarkson in that!). And Anywhere But Here. And Mother and Child. Nothing like a major health crisis to flush out your Netflix queue!

But fuck it. Steel Magnolias, baby. There, I said it. It’s goopy and sentimental but you know what? The relationship at its core, Sally Field and Julia Roberts, feels absolutely genuine. Julia Roberts plays a young woman with diabetes, and Sally Field the constantly-worried mother. Both are headstrong but you can tell that Mom is secretly proud that her daughter is determined not to let her illness stop her from living on her own terms. Sally Field will give anything, including body parts, to keep her daughter going, but when the worst happens, the grief and anger are palpable and real. For my money, Sally Field talking to her comatose daughter is just about the most heart-wrenching tribute to motherhood you’re apt to find.

And Mermaids. I can’t help it. The family situation reminds me so much of my own – just a mom and her girls on their own in the world. It’s not always easy, or friendly. When you fight you fight big, but you love big too. And the dancing in the kitchen: yes! I love Cher’s awkward stabs at motherhood – the funny little food and the ill-timed advice – and Christina Ricci’s weird little pumpkin-headed wiggles.

Now Voyager is the ultimate in family dysfunction. A hateful and over-bearing mother stifles her daughter (played by the inesteemable Bette Davis) into a nervous breakdown that turns out to be her weird salvation. Of course, upon return, the now glammed up and self-assured daughter is again reduced to a puddle in the face of her unfeeling mother.

Sherrybaby

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Say what you will about Maggie Gyllenhaal, she’s very comfortable showing her tits on camera. Even now that they’re low-hangers and she’s past the age where a bra is obligatory.

Sherry (Gyllenhaal) has just been released from prison and is struggling to reintegrate into society. She’s struggling in a half-way home, looking for work, and trying to rekindle a relationship with her very young daughter. Sherry is newly clean (thanks, prison!), emotionally stunted, and pretty raw. She’d be a wholly unlikeable character if not for the measured and sympathetic portrayal by Gyllenhaal, who tries inject Sherry with some dimension.

Meanwhile, the relationship between mother and daughter flounders. The little girl has been raised by her aunt and uncle, and her mother is a virtual stranger. Though the daughter is 5 or 6 at most, it’s a struggle to say which is the more mature. Sherry is needy and narcissistic and expects her daughter to respond to her cloying overtures every time she comes calling. Unfortunately, real life doesn’t seem to much up to what she’d been dreaming of in prison.

Writer and director Laurie Collyer doesn’t mince words. This is gritty, unpleasant stuff, and there are no easy answers to be gained here. There are two primary concerns for Sherry, and for those of us watching her: can she regain custody (and for us, perhaps, should she), and can she stay away from the drugs?

I was really riveted by Sherry’s regression. When her father shows up, the way she panders for his attention and affection is uncomfortable, and in direct competition with that of her daughter. It’s sad, and perhaps Collyer tries a little too hard to create a too-inconvenient checkered past to be responsible for her downward spiral. But there’s real pathos here. In fact, looking back, weighing all of Sherry’s pathologies, the dysfunctional and the desperation, I’m surprised that I didn’t come away feeling that this movie was depressing. Is there a secret vein of hope there? I’m not sure. And I’m not going to call this a great movie, but it strives to be realistic, and you have to admire it for its total abandonment of rose-coloured endings.

Imitation of Life

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Two single mothers combine their households to help support each other through difficult times – one, an aspiring actress with a cute blonde daughter, the other a homeless black woman willing to work for her keep, and that of her-light-skinned daughter.

There are two important mother-daughter relationships at play here, but the way those relationships intersect is also pretty astonishing for a movie made in 1959. As Lana Turner as Lora Meredith begins her ascent to fame, Annie (Juanita Moore) becomes relegated to loyal employee. It’s obvious to all the two are friends, and that Miss Meredith depends fiercely on Annie, but this can never be a relationship between equals. The two little girls, raised under the same roof as playmates and friends, are on more even footing, but though young Sarah Jane can pass as white, she isn’t. Point blank. And in 1959, that’s quite an obstacle.

Annie is a maternal presence to both young girls, running the household and being available for physical affection whereas Miss Meredith is more keen on being the provider. She’s not exactly cold, but she is focused on her career and willing to send her daughter away to school for her own convenience. Together these two women manage to fill out each other’s strengths and weaknesses but there’s one sticking point that neither can hope to change. Sarah Jane prefers to deny her mother, her roots, and her own race. Since she can pass as white, she plans to, and does everything she can to reject her mother and keep her secret safe.

Meanwhile, the biggest problem that Lora and daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) eventually face is having fallen in love with the same man. It feels like director Douglas Sirk is actually daring to draw attention away from Lana Turner by giving more screen time, and juicier plot lines, to the film’s two black characters (Susan Kohner, as Sarah-Jane, is actually of Mexican-Jewish descent). The audience never experiences Sarah-Jane’s identity crisis from her own point of view but rather we’re forced to interpret it through a 1950s lens. We do feel it personally, though, through a mother’s heart ache. This earned both Moore and Kohner Academy Award nominations for best actress that year, though of course neither won.

This movie requires some analysis, and there’s a level of hypocrisy that must be navigated. Actually, I think Sirk was a bit of a cynic because there’s a hopelessness to this movie that really got to me. He presents us with racial tensions and materialistic values that both pale in comparison to the underlying vibe that families are being torn apart, their bonds degenerating even in the time it takes to make a film. Lana Turner’s real-life 14 year old daughter Cheryl had just fatally stabbed Turner’s boyfriend (she was let off, justifiable homicide they called it, since the boyfriend was beating her mom up at the time). Nevertheless, this caused a serious rift between mother and daughter, and threatened Turner’s career until Sirk convinced her to channel her pain into a movie about the struggle between mothers and daughters. And here we are.

Now, Voyager

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Bette Davis stars as a frumpy old-maid type, possibly in the midst of a nervous break down because her domineering mother has orchestrated every moment of her paltry life up until now, and has created a culture where the whole family feels entitled to pick on her. One day her sister brings home a renowned psychologist who believes that if only Charlotte could escape her mother’s clutches, she could regain her sanity through independence. He convinces her to come be treated at his sanitorium and when she eventually leaves there, she is suddenly the more sophisticated image of Bette Davis we all know and love. She embarks on a cruise where she has a brief love affair with a married man, Jerry (played by Paul Henreid).

When she finally returns home, the mother is horrified by Charlotte’s assuredness and immediately starts to break it down. They argue, and the mother dies of a heart attack. Charlotte’s grief and guilt send her fleeing back to the sanitorium, but a fellow patient whom she takes under her wing keeps her from yet another breakdown.

A weird movie filled with “mommy issues” but gives real insight into not just the Vale family but the world in which this wealthy family lives, the kind of repression and sheltering done to a certain kind of woman, the ugly fate of those unmarried, and the strange salvation that only a nervous breakdown can bring. It really highlights the importance of a mother’s nurturing to her child’s self-worth. The iciness between these two is legendary and the mother-daughter melodrama is juicy AND neurotic. So classic.

Although the movie hints at adultery, it does not reward the behaviour. Everyone must ultimately stay in his or her miserable marriage, and this kind of self-sacrifice is deemed heroic, even romantic. No wonder nervous breakdowns were so popular! Defining line: “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.” Slay me.

And can we take a moment to discuss the beautiful woman disguised as an ugly duckling later revealed to be – gasp! – a beautiful woman all along! Why does this continue to happen in movies all the time? It’s ridiculous, and insulting, and degrading. Bette Davis is given thicker eyebrows, glasses, and a less defined waist and is called an ugly spinster. But was there a single moment she stopped being Bette Goddamned Davis? Of course not! This reminds me of so many nerd makeover movies where all you need to do is remove the glasses to discover she was a hottie all along. It’s gross. Anne Hathaway gets contact lenses and a hair straightener in the Princess Diaries. Olivia Newton-John gets some leather and spike heels in Grease. Sandra Bullock only needed some shorter hemlines in Miss Congeniality. Brittany Murphy just needed to spend money on designer swag in Clueless. All of these women clearly gorgeous in the before and the after, inducing agonizing eye-rolling and discrediting the movie’s intentions. But Bette Davis? Bette Goddamned Davis? There’s no unibrow in the world that can unmake such a goddess.

Wild

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At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I read this book way back when it was first published and didn’t overly love it. I’m wondering right now whether I hold books to an even higher standard than I do movies and believe that this is probably so. The book was written by Cheryl Strayed herself – an account of her time spent solo-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in order to slam the brakes on her self-destruction. I don’t think I liked the voice of Strayed, didn’t like her haughtiness, didn’t connect with her unapologetic ways. Luckily, this movie has undergone the Nick Hornby treatment and as a result, Strayed is a little more tolerable and the story a little more cohesive.

Reese Witherspoon plays the title character. She’s good. She’s good but she’s not great. It doesn’t feel like an overly-challenging role. As she hikes along, some loose association will jar her memory and we’ll receive another piece of the puzzle via flashback. She’s entirely believable in every scene, it’s just that no scene is particularly gripping. I enjoyed seeing her bare face exposed to us (did anyone else feel she looks like an Olsen twin without makeup?) but I didn’t really feel like it translated enough to an emotional vulnerability that seemed necessary in telling such a story. In fact, the “Nick Hornby treatment” that I started out being grateful for began to seem just a little too trite. The puzzle pieces fit together just a little too snugly. No one’s life path is that linear, and I felt that Witherspoon struggled with the script’s limitations.

Perhaps so did the director, because neither did I feel a connection with the vast and probably very beautiful landscapes. We never dwelled on them. They only existed as backdrop. The terrain was rough, certainly, but we never get a sense of it because the camera is always maddeningly smooth. None of the 1000 miles she treks through seem to be all that “Wild” but the thing about this movie is that the land should be Reese’s costar. Richard Brody, reviewer for The New Yorker, put it about as well as anyone could: “they don’t give Oscars for Best Mountains.” True. And after last year’s success with Dallas Buyer’s Club, it certainly feels like Jean-Marc Vallée is gunning for the Oscar by any means necessary.

I criticized the book for being too smug and the movie for being too glib. And maybe I’m just hard to please but there was a lot of story here, a lot of layers and potential depth but for some reason we stayed safely near the surface, and while I’d still place this film in the top 20% of 2014, I think it failed itself because it had all the ingredients to be much much better and wasn’t.

Postcards From the Edge

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Director Mike Nichols helps Carrie Fisher brings her best-selling confessional novel to the big screen. Based on her own life (her mother is the fabulous Debbie Reynolds), Carrie writes about a middle-aged troubled movie star (another Oscar-nominated performance by Meryl Streep) who survives rehab only to be relegated to house-arrest with her overbearing, scene-stealing Hollywood-icon mother (Shirley MacLaine).

The thinly veiled rivalry between mother and daughter makes for some pretty unsettling confrontations. Fisher and Nichols are both Hollywood elite themselves, which means there’s plenty of in-jokes and winks to paper over the lack of depth in the plot. There are no real insights into addictions or family drama here, but there’s an emotional wallop that just may get you, if the sight of MacLaine’s shapely legs in a slitted red dress don’t get you first.

Melodrama has never looked so good: cinematographer Michael Ballhous does career-defining work here, while Nichols does his usual smug, detached thing over in the corner. Do either of these things save it from the inevitable clichés? Not really, but you’re more disposed to forgiving them.

If you can look past the scandal-free safety of the film, there’s a secondary cast to make up the difference: Dennis Quaid as the sleazy boyfriend, Gene Hackman as her demanding director, Richard Dreyfus as her sensitive doctor, and was that Annette Bening I saw? IMDB says you bet your balls it was! She’s whoring it up with cynicism and wit.

If you were a fan of the book, you’ll notice the film has lost its acerbic edge. It’s all about the comedy here, and even an almost-lethal trip to the ER for a good old-fashioned stomach-pumping can’t quell the chuckles. MacLaine and Streep shine through showbiz and show tunes, and if it’s a little shallow, it’s also a good dose of fun.