The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Nicolas Pesce
"I can't be alone again!"
About 20 minutes into our film last night, I paused it, turned to Emily and exclaimed, "Why do we insist on watching movies like this? What is wrong with us?" There's no answer, of course, other than the more we debase our sensibilities in fiction, the less we will feel the sting of reality. But sometimes you start to hit the upper limits of what the human mind can take. And it's not like The Eyes of My Mother is the goriest or most disturbing film we've watched, but the gentle subtlety of its awfulness just makes you feel terrible.
If you can remember back to Spooktober II, we took a look at Henry: Portrait of a Serial killer, and my general impression of the film was: "Ew." It's not an easy film to watch because it's so viscerally gross and unsettling. It holds you down and pours black sewage into your eyes, but it's too compelling to stop watching. The Eyes of My Mother isn't on that level of quality, but it's so quiet and serene with the on-screen trauma that when the real crazy shit starts going down, you're unprepared.
So let's hold hands and try and get through this together.
What's it about: A young girl and her parents live on a secluded farm in the middle of these blessed United States. One day a traveling salesman/serial killer comes to the home and murders the girl's mother in front of her. Her father comes home, discovers the murderer in the midst of his crime, and locks him in the barn. We follow the girl on her journey into a lonely adulthood. It...does not go well.
What's interesting: There's so many weird and disturbing things about this film, I'm not sure where to begin. Our main character, Francisca, is clearly very close to her mother. As they walk around the family farm, mom takes time to educate her daughter about anything and everything. At one point, they remove and dissect a cow's eyeball on the dining room table, as Francisca's mother was an eye surgeon in her native Portugal and hopes her daughter will grow up to be a doctor some day as well.
As I said in the recap, a sex weirdo shows up at the farm and kills Francisca's mother, only to be captured himself by Francisca's father. Dad does not seem to handle the trauma well, as they never bother calling the authorities of any sort, and simply lock the killer in the barn, and bury mom in the woods out back. When the killer wakes up later that night and begins screaming out Francisca's name, she creeps into the barn and plucks out the guy's eyes and removes his larynx. Yeah.
Hereabouts we jump forward in time, and Francisca is a young woman lying in bed next to the very still and clearly dead body of her father. We also learn that our traveling salesman/serial killer is still alive these years later, still chained in the barn, turned into a sort of perpetual infant that Francisca feeds and soothes every day (or when she feels like she needs a good snuggle).
Francisca also does not handle her father's death very well. There is a long and squirmy scene where she has his nude corpse in a bath, and she climbs into the milky fetid water just to be with him. She props him up in front of the television and cuddles with him. He sits him up in a rocking chair to watch her dance around to weird old Portuguese records. When she's feeling particularly sad, and dad's corpse won't suffice, she will go dig up mom's bones and get cozy with them for a while.
The crux of the film is here in Francisca's adulthood. She cannot tolerate loneliness and becomes more and more desperate to avoid it. She's also not looking for meaningful relationships with people (and maybe isn't capable of that), she just wants a helpless, voiceless infant.
I don't want to spoil anything else, but there's more, and it's much worse than the first half.
Finally, this is maybe the shortest feature length horror movie you can find. It clocks in at a tight 76 minutes, and feels somehow shorter than that. Pesce could have padded the film out, but I'm guessing the budget would not have supported that, and I'm not convinced it would have benefited the film in any profound way. There's an hour and 15 minutes worth of story here, and that's what you get.
Other films I thought of: Like I said above, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer came to mind as soon as I realized what was going on. They're both serial killer origin stories in a way. I know I also thought about Hannibal in the way the horrible crimes were handled. And Emily had a good call: this was like a really long, uncensored, non-supernatural episode of X-Files without any of the Mulder/Scully scenes.
Miscellany: There's not much more to say, really. It's gross, you'll feel icky after watching it, and there's no joy here. Hail Satan.
Recommendation: Eh? If you read the above and thought: "aw hell yeah fuck me up fam," go for it. If you're nearing your maximum on misery and nightmare fuel, maybe steer clear. It's certainly a well made film, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the director does in the future.
Remarkably disturbing
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