24 The Dead Mother

[swo17]

The Dead Mother



Ismael (Karra Elejalde, Timecrimes) breaks into the house of a fine art restorer and shoots the homeowner dead, leaving her daughter orphaned and traumatized for life. Years later Ismael is working in a bar where he sees the daughter again. Paranoid that she has recognised him and will report him, he kidnaps her and holds her hostage, demanding that her hospital pay a ransom for her release. As he spends more time with her a strange bond develops that causes him to delay the ransom request or fulfil his threats of throwing her in front of a train. But he can't delay forever... A gothic thriller with pitch-black humour that recalls the Coen brothers, Juanma Bajo Ulloa's sophomore feature won a host of prestigious international awards and was a precursor to the Spanish genre explosion.

BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION SPECIAL FEATURES:

• 4K restoration of the film supervised and approved by director Juanma Bajo Ulloa
• Uncompressed stereo 2.0 audio
• Audio commentary by Bajo Ulloa
• The Story of La Madre Muerta (20XX, XX mins) a documentary on the making of the film featuring behind-the-scenes images and interviews with the cast and crew
• Victor's Kingdom [El reino de Victor] (1989, 38 mins) - Goya Award-winning short film by Ulloa, restored in 4K
• Gallery of behind-the-scenes and promotional imagery
• Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
• Limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by Xavier Aldana Reyes, author of Spanish Gothic: National Identity, Collaboration and Cultural Adaptation, and newly translated archival writing by Juanma Bajo Ulloa, co-writer Eduardo Bajo Ulloa and an appreciation by Nacho Vigalondo
• Limited edition soundtrack CD featuring Bingen Mendizábal's sumptuous score [exclusive to the limited edition]
• Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings

[colinr0380]

Oh excellent! This is another Tartan Video rescue as it had a release on VHS in the mid 1990s (part of Tartan's brief run of Spanish films along with Tesis and The Day of the Beast) and even received one screening on UK television by Channel 4 on the 8th November 1997 and has never been shown since, so it will be nice to revisit it.

[CSM126]

What a profoundly unpleasant film this is. I understand that it’s meant to be, but I think it also winds up being unintentionally unpleasant as well.

SpoilerShow

There’s a through line of dark humor around people thinking Ismael could be sexually attracted to his handicapped victim, but then we actually see him molest her, which makes us hope to see his comeuppance, only to wind up with an ending where it seems we’re supposed to believe he’s remorseful, or maybe in love with this woman who has no personality or apparent conscious thought? He just breaks down crying and begging for her and… ew. In all the wrong ways, ew. If ever there was a movie that needed a stereotypical “bad guy gets killed” ending, it’s this one. There is a way to do a redemption story about an awful person coming to the light, but this guy is the devil and deserves to just die. Maybe I’m biased because I have a relative who is intellectually disabled, but if I see a character abuse someone like that I’m not interested in their redemption, or pitying them as this ending seems to expect.

Now with that being said, the film is well made. No denying that. The cinematography, score and acting are all very well done. And honestly, before things went too far for me, I thought this film was surprisingly entertaining. But, yeah, it went to a place I couldn’t really accept in the end. So, all positive on the technical aspects, but icky morals. I would like to hear what others think.

And since this is my first Radiance disc I will take a moment to say that the packaging and disc presentation are lovely and I look forward to watching the other handful of titles I picked up.

[therewillbeblus]

I don't share CSM126's rigid moral issue with the character's trajectory, but I agree that from a narrative perspective what we get is not earned. I can get behind perverse narrative ends that make us confront uncomfortable topics and land on ambiguous gray truths that point to value in the inconceivable, but this film didn't plant the seeds necessary for any thought-provoking viewer response. I'm not sure why this film exists or what it's trying to accomplish, but my best guess is

SpoilerShow

Ismael is aware of his disordered mind and abnormal emotional-behavioral cues, and yet he understands loneliness. He has never felt connected or understood by another person, so perhaps he skews his narrative to project an affinity with his victim, based on his own emotional responses tied to the incident with her from his past - a lot easier to do since she's intellectually impaired. Maybe he mistakes her own abnormal behavior for a mate, since they are both broadly "different," combined with a shared history he morphs into intimacy with his guilt. I don't know, and I don't feel like the film made me care enough to grasp at even those straws.