thelastblogontheleft
The Eyes of My Mother is director Nicolas Pesce's directorial debut, and an impressive one at that. It's an extremely intentional black & white art-house horror film, with more attention to detail than gore throughout.The story centers around Francisca (played by Olivia Bond first and then Kika Magalhães who was particularly awesome), a young girl whose quiet, simple life is turned upside-down by the murder of her mother (Diana Agostini) and, shortly after, the passing of her father (Paul Nazak).** SPOILERS! **I thought the choice of black and white was excellent. There were many scenes that played out like beautiful, striking photographs set in motion. It also dulled the gore (that was more plentiful now that I think about it in retrospect than I honestly noticed in the moment) while letting us focus on more of the emotion (or lack thereof) in the more brutal scenes. But some shots, like Francisca climbing into the tub while bathing her father's body, are made into pure heartbreaking art by the color choice.Charlie (Will Brill), the man who kills Francisca's mother with an unabashed enthusiasm that was disturbing to see, was a great character that I almost wish we saw more of. He just immediately made me feel uncomfortable even before having any inkling of his true intentions.Each scene — every single one — felt very intentionally placed and timed. Nothing was left out, and nothing was there just as a frill… it was meticulously planned.Francisca both as a child and as an older teenager (we're never really sure of her true age but she seems to be 20 at the oldest) has this detached fascination about her. You get the sense that she's barely ever had to focus on anyone but herself. Her mother's mention of "loneliness can do strange things to the mind" couldn't be more apt. She works in silence, methodically playing out some truly twisted acts with the casual mood one might have while slicing a cucumber (I didn't mean for that comparison to be so accurate but there it is), and yet there's such a desperation about her, such a yearning to be less alone, and an unwillingness, or inability, to see how her desires affect others. Her stealing the woman's baby was another example: watching her cuddle and coo at the baby, finally having someone who will be forced to be her companion, as the child's mother crawled, gasping, towards her was chilling.One of the few times she breaks this blankness is when she finally kills Charlie after he escapes from the barn. Her stabbing him is almost sensual, especially as she rubs his hair and kisses his neck, and it made it one of the most disturbing murder scenes I've seen in a LONG timeUltimately, less is more, and Pesce really knew how to use that to his advantage with a brilliant combination of artful shots, a heartbreaking desire to ease pain and loneliness, and unapologetic views of violence and sadism, a sort of Americana-gone- very-wrong.
lojitsu
Here's The Lowedown on "The Eyes of my Mother" (R - 2016 - US)...The universe is unfolding as it should.Genre: Horror/DisturbingMy Score: 5.6Cast=3 Acting=8 Plot=7 Ending=4 Story=7 Scare=3 Jump=2 F/X=7 Gore=6 Disturb=9A young, lonely woman is consumed by her deepest and darkest desires after tragedy strikes her quiet country life. "Loneliness can do strange things to the mind." This movie was twisted...disturbing...and boring!! The score may not reflect this, but I did not like this film. It's all filmed in black and white and that takes away from the visceral gore that should have been seen. The film was so slow that I wanted to shut it off...I've had dentist appointments that felt shorter than this movie. Unless you have a love for slow, twisted B&W horror...I can't recommend this. I will just put this on my shelf never to be seen again.
falbpe
Sometimes, the road to the most absolute desolation, passes through murder, torture and confinement. In The Eyes of My Mother (2016), Nicolas Pesce's first film, violence does not impress by the use of blood but by its coldness, in the camera, in the actors, in the landscape: an icy nature that, however, in itself does not exclude the recognition in the other. The horror and the disturbance, in black and white (the most suitable media to express the light and the darkness of time) crosses the eyes of the spectators and the characters; and this horror tinged with the sadness of fado, the Portuguese songs that seem even more desolate in the immensities of the North American prairies (almost as in those typical Russian songs, where there is always a husband, a son or a mother, lost in the war, or winter, and that never returns), in the end, recreates an appearance of pain, the illusion of a self-contained picture that closes on itself and from which the viewer can not easily escape. Not every spectator, it is true; for as in some mysticisms, not all human beings will gain access to the soul, nor to the necessary state of mind, which requires the contemplation.Francisca, the orphan, like her parents, seems to have chosen isolation, not because she prefers it, but because it is the only thing she knows. What she has learned from her mother, in this kind of universe of American Gothic, German expressionism and Portuguese melodrama, are not only the skills of a butcher or a surgeon on the battlefield; but also the compassion of all who must work with the flesh. For Francisca's eyes there is no evil; there are only accidents and chances, and there is also no joy in revenge, not even in crime. Just as you have to sew an open wound, they are only things that sometimes, sometimes a lifetime, must be done. And in this fatalism (fado or destiny in Portuguese), which is within the same beings and not outside, it is not the insensitivity towards hurt and pain, neither its frozen glance, but its intense desire not to be alone, which in the end will condemn Francisca to an implacable solitude, and to a new exile: not from the land on the other side of the ocean, like that of her mother, but of all humanity.
