The Dead Mother


Produced at the height of the ‘90s post-modernism film movement, The Dead Mother (1993) is a thriller that disguises its inspirations quite well.  Like his contemporaries, director Juanma Bajo Ulloa embraces transgressive violence.  Like Hitchcock, he’s a bit of a sadistic show-off.  And like French New Wave auteurs Godard and Truffaut, he dresses it all up as something more than just another genre effort.  All those pretensions should be off-putting, but Ulloa’s film winds up being so pleased with itself you can’t help but skim the cream off the top.

A career sociopath and sometime burglar, Ismael (Karra Elejalde) murders a woman and mentally cripples her daughter on a job gone wrong.  Years later he recognizes the surviving victim of his crime – Leire (Ana Alvarez) – at a clinic for special needs patients.  Fearing she’ll identify him, Ismael kidnaps her and returns to his hideout where Maite (Lio) – his abused love interest – hatches a scheme for a ransom.  But Ismael finds himself curiously fascinated by Leire’s mute, childlike existence, delaying her planned execution as Maite becomes more suspicious of his intentions.  Meanwhile, a nurse from the clinic, Blanca (Silvia Marso), stumbles upon the plan and stages an impromptu rescue of her own.

 

In true post-modern fashion, Ulloa knows his audience is watching a movie so he stages several self-aware suspense sequences that cleverly toy with their emotions.  Full credit to Hitchcock and De Palma, The Dead Mother plays in the same mean-spirited sandbox with darkly comic details and coincidences that are gleefully squirm inducing.  But the film is balanced by a grim cast of characters whose pain and suffering – although often self-inflicted – is only matched by their casual cruelty to one another.  Ulloa wrings joy out of the mechanics of the filmmaking process, but the universe he creates is one of crippling personal sorrow.  Even the one ray of light in all this darkness – Blanca – gets a send-off in true Hitchcockian fashion.

 

As the mentally handicapped heroine, Alvarez’s performance puts a target on her back.  A staggering beauty, the actress combines jerky mannerisms and a chocolate fixation that certainly wouldn’t get a politically correct pass today.  But since her brain injury was a result of a gunshot rather than something congenital, she squeaks by.  Elejalde brings great depth to his bad guy whose psycho behavior is truly psychological, taking things right to the edge and beyond.  The Dead Mother is one of those films you share with people who “get it,” those who know that every genre needs a good stretch now and then.  And Ulloa’s film will definitely make you feel the burn.

 

Released by Radiance Films in a two-disc package that includes a 4K restoration on Blu-ray and a soundtrack CD, the feature itself looks fantastic, full of noirish nighttime photography that pop against the muted color scheme.  Along with a Making Of and audio commentary from Ulloa, the director’s 40-minute short film, Victor’s Kingdom, is also presented in a restored version.  A dark take on traditional fairy tales, his gloomy world-view never looked better.

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