Mother and Son

Inspired by the life and roots of her children’s father, Serraille’s original screenplay embeds tacit, national-scale socioeconomic commentary in its intimate domestic story, though smartly avoids making blunt symbols of its sharp, specific characters.

Serraille, whose debut feature Jeune Femme won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2017, has returned with a film that feels like a jewellery box of telling moments: there is precious stuff here, and real sparkle too.

Here is a film about a very complicated and painful kind of coming of age, or maybe a meditation on “coming of age” as something that never actually happens; it also examines the illusory dividing line between childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience, present and past.

Léonor Serraille’s Mother and Son is a lovely film about feminine strength that also refuses to glorify motherhood.

Although Mother And Son loses some of its energy as it unfolds, it is still a sensitive and complex examination of the shifting tensions in a migrant family.

The writing cannot match the poignancy of Lengronne’s performance. Her emotional immediacy is more interesting than the epic, yet comparatively muted scope of the film.

Léonor Serraille’s film Mother and Son contains moving strokes, but struggles to make a lasting emotional dent.