The story of a complex relationship between an overbearing mother and her obese, forty-year-old son who still lives at home. Yelena and Nikolay Renard, a new, promising voice in Russian cinema, made fiction out of a real life story, using a very realistic style in which shots are sometimes turned into still-lifes.
Yelena and Nikolay Renard, new, promising voices in Russian cinema, have made fiction out of a real-life story, using a minimal plot that focuses on the complicated relationship between a mother and her obese forty-year-old son. They live together in a humble flat, as she does not give him the opportunity to live his own life. Her overbearing love has driven him into his own imaginary world, in which he is in love with a mannequin in a nearby boutique. Day by day, the mother gets more irritated by her son: because he is fat, because he snores, because of his pure existence… until the son decides to leave her and go live with his father. She helps him pack, but does not wake him in the morning in time to catch his plane.
All of the characters are played by non-actors, except for the mother. The film is shot in a very realistic way, with long, static shots that register each scene without editing. This is intended to evoke a feeling in the audience that they are witnesses in real time, or are a part of these still-life scenes, with the huge sculpture of the son’s body in the centre of it all. To be even more realistic, the film makers used no artificial lighting, colour corrections or especially composed film music.
We are witnessing a drama of two people who are trapped, sharing their lives in a few square meters, without being able to escape. Made for 8000 dollars. —Rotterdam Film Festival
This week I present a selection, below, of more of my favorite posters from the International Film Festival Rotterdam where the walls of
Yelena and Nikolay Renard's camera does not move once in Mama. There are no cuts within scenes. Not a single word is spoken. A man, absurdly
