Thomas is just 5 years old when his mother gives him
up for adoption, and his younger brother Patrick is still a baby. But Thomas never forgets this rather wild
woman who abandons them rather than trying to cope, and he never stops obsessing for one single moment about finding his mother again.
The Jouvets a middle class childless couple adopt the two boys and prove to be kind and decent loving parents. Yet by the time Thomas enters his teens he
makes their life miserable with all his temper tantrums and angrily reminding
them that he is not their son. Eventually unable to cope with his violent behavior
they pack him off to Boarding School in the hope that the discipline will help
control his moods. It doesn't, and at the
same time, he persuades a Social Worker to break the rules and give him his
mother’s last known address. Armed with
this knowledge he surreptitiously sets off to see her, but when she opens her
apartment door and confronts him heavily pregnant and not recognizing him, he is totally dismayed and turns on his heals and runs away.
Some years later, now working as a car mechanic, he
wants to try to see her again. This
time he introduces himself, and she just invites him in casually as if nothing has happened at all. He meets his new
younger brother Frederic, and discovers that his father is no longer on the scene
too. The meeting is brief, but enough
for Thomas to want to see them both again.
And he does, but the fragile relationship that they start to build is nothing like the one that he has obsessed over all those years. His mother is just as irresponsible and
selfish as ever and probably not capable of loving any one person enough. Especially her son.
Patrick his other brother (now re-christened Francois) is happy enough with the parents that raised them and is too occupied with
having fun and dating girls unlike his morose and secretive brother. The adopted mother is worried about Thomas
being a loner and his lack of friends, girls in particular. To keep her happy he tells her he is seeing
one, but what he fails to add is that she is his birth mother.
The latter statement is not totally surprising because
by that point in the story there have been more than one occasion that Thomas
has leered at his mother in an overtly sexual manner. And then in one scene he discovers naked
pictures of her, which he studies in detail.
But just when the insinuation of possible incest is more than hinted at,
the story takes a sharp curve in another direction, which comes as a total
surprise at that point.
This far from cozy mother-child story is based on a
real life incident, which gives the whole thing more resonance. Thomas’s anger is hard to countenance especially
when he lashes out without regard to the feelings of anyone else, or indeed the
consequences. What is not clear if this is
purely the result of his abandonment or just the fact that his fits of rage are
just inexplicable? I think it actually
makes for a better film not knowing.
This French movie written and directed by veteran
filmmaker Claude Miller with his son Nathan Miller making his feature film
debut. And it has a remarkable young
talented actor Vincent Rottiers playing the broody and confused Thomas.
It’s an intriguing story and well told, and will
definitely be one that anyone who has ever been abandoned can relate too (like me). And after my weekend viewing of three movies
that one after another dealt with father/son relationships ('The Kid on The
Bike', 'Footnote', 'The Forgiveness of Blood') it's a refreshing change to see one that
deals with a mother/son relationship.
Or more accurately, the lack of
one.
★★★★★★★★
