Mia Madre

A most unusual and touching film.

Very sad movie had expected a bit of comedy.

Is this in English or English subtitles at least? I already bought one and it's the wrong region. It says region one and that's me, but still not compatible format. Is this a region one as it says?

In Mia Madre ,Moretti has predisposed us to accept a death as part of the ongoing business of life .Here it’s the elderly ailing mother, Ada, of the director of the film she ( Margherita)is currently making on industrial relations in the takeover of a factory.This is a beautifully composed film with humour, spirituality and grace and all the leading actors are remarkable, especially Margherita Buy as the director. The real director of the film Mia Madre is Nanni Moretti, who here plays the quieter on- looking role of Magherita’s brother, Giovanni. Moretti himself suffered the death of his mother while making a previous film so felt the desire to reflect that through his alter-ego sister. This is a family film about a family but it’s also about Moretti as a Left-wing filmmaker, who has to answer his critics at press conferences, Margherita speaks that modern audiences want more than entertainment… but as she says this her inner critical voice takes over: “Why have I been saying this for years? Everyone thinks I can understand what’s happening, interpret reality, but I don’t understand a thing anymore.” Giovanni and Margherita share duties of caring for their mother alternatively.Her worthy but dull film has everything wrong with it, she gives mixed messages to her crew, criticises the fact they don’t pull her up when she’s wrong, offers little in the way of praise, is hypercritical of her actors. What her film lacks in humour is made up for by John Turturro as Barry Huggins the Italian actor from America, who is so up-his-own-ass he claims Stanley Kubrick was ‘crazy about’ him. His career is on the skids and he resents taking directions, forgets his lines and ends up in one scene trading insults in front of the whole acting and filming crew. Margherita is soon shouting at her mother for not trying to walk when she helps her from bed . All the time we see Margherita’s relationships with mother, daughter, brother and ex-husband. There are many sequences where dreams, memories, nightmares, anxieties take over: like her mother getting out of hospital and walking into the traffic, or patrolling the length of an enormous queue for one of her previous films; in the queue her mother and her younger self. In another she crashes a car into a wall repeatedly so her mother can’t drive it ( her license expired).Ada once taught Latin and we get a file of her ex-students come to pay warm tribute after she dies; before she dies her lovely relationship with her grand daughter Livia in teaching her Latin, so she can pass her finals. Margherita and Frederico(her ex-) buy daughter Livia a scooter. Margherita and Giovanni take their mum home before she dies. Margerita and Barry make up and the film is completed. Ada dies.

Any movie about making movies will tend to get better reviews than it deserves. So, saying this won awards at a film festival is meaningless when the main character is a film director.Overall this is a good movie about someone struggling at work, while at the same time dealing with her life issues. Her brother is very likeable character, and we never really know what is going on with him. Margherita does not even realize that he has not been going to work and has been at the hospital every day. Nor does she know what is going on with her mother and daughter.John Turturro character is horrible and you can fast forward thru every scene he is in without detracting from the movie. As a movie director, at what point can you fire him and reshoot all the scenes he is in? Put him on a plane back to wherever he came from.