Mother
(Kristof Bilsen)

Kristof Bilsen’s Mother posits the question of how someone can continue living with the present when they’ve already seen the future. It’s a diptych narrative documentary centered on a care center in Thailand. Here we observe Pomm tend to her Alzheimer patients, where she will note that she sacrifices time with her children to maintain this emotionally grueling job. A parallel narrative involving an opulent Swiss family preparing to send their ~50-year-old matriarch, Maya, to this Thai retreat is largely seen through the eyes of the mother’s daughters and father. As the two narratives converge, Mother ends up speaking to the distinctions between class, race, and maternity.  

Desolate narratives of this type can often provide bits of illumination but Mother strains to impart any real wisdom. Part of it comes from the choppy editing that makes up the film, where the two parallel narratives are so woefully underdeveloped.  Provided that Maya’s background is largely realized through her family, it’s unfortunate that so little is discussed about the ethics of sending Maya away to Thailand in the first place. Regarding Pomm, her disconnect from her children is moving, but what’s missing is a broader examination of Thailand’s sociopolitical climate that pushes Pomm to cling to such a painful job. As touching as Mother can be, its two-prong narrative seems like a compromise, with Bilsen never fully developing either story to the heights of their inherent dramaturgy.