Stéphanie Blanchoud and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi impress in Ursula Meier’s stark, well-written tale of malignant domestic resentment
The line is there to be crossed in this engrossing, unnerving but unexpectedly sympathetic drama of family dysfunction from French-Swiss film-maker Ursula Meier who made her memorable debut back in 2008 with the eco-parable Home, starring a particularly intransigent Isabelle Huppert. Meier has a knack of creating overwhelming mothers: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is on very imperious and distrait form as Christina, a former classical concert pianist who abandoned her career for her family and never let her three daughters forget it – finally becoming a demanding music teacher who also appears to have taken her oldest child as a pupil. This is Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) who is a talented pop musician, singer and guitarist with a thriving local following.
Maybe Margaret owes some of her success to her impossible mother and maybe she doesn’t. But her explosive temper is worsened by any contact with her mum and the film begins with a spectacular, violent fight in slo-mo in front of her aghast sisters Louise (India Hair) and Marion (Elli Spagnolo), accompanied by some of the tasteful classical music that has helped drive Margaret over the edge. It’s caused by … what? Everything and nothing. It’s been building her whole life. But Margaret gives her mother a slap to the side of the head which gives Christina tinnitus – what she describes as a continuous high B-flat in her head.
