My Mother

In My Mother director Nanni Moretti examines three generations of women as they attempt to find their identities and make their lives. 

The title emphasizes the grandmother, as her heart weakens and she loses hold on her mind and body. Her teaching Latin stressed the discipline of structure — in a sentence, hence in life — but she also knew when to cut loose and dance with her students. One remembers that she taught them life as well as Latin. In another Latin lesson, she urges a nuanced sensitivity to verbs. Nouns are easy enough, the given, but what counts is what we do, the verbs, the actions that we choose to define us and our lives. 

Her granddaughter is a teenager just adopting the Latin discipline. She is already negotiating her relationships with her divorced parents. When she gets her scooter she learns that riding it requires care but also a loosening up and a leaning in. It’s an emblem of the balance she needs to move along in life — as granny balanced discipline with dance. For want of that discipline, the girl’s school term was ruined by a heartbreaking love. 

The central character is the girl’s mother, Margherita, a film director trying to make a labour drama while dealing with her mother’s decay and death. An ex-lover actor says that she’s too insensitive to others and too willful to get along. 

Her problem lies in the instruction she gives her actors: “Play the actor as well as the role.” The actors don’t understand that and she admits she doesn’t either. A director normally asks a director for total immersion in the character. But in her life Margherita lives detached from others. That’s why her two relationships ended, why she didn’t know about her daughter’s heartbreak, why she only now learns what values and esteem her mother commanded.  

In contrast to these three strong women are two weak men. John Turturro plays the comic butt, an American actor whose ego dwarfs his abilities and record. As he struggles with the language and the lines he’s a caricature of playing the actor instead of the role. 

Director Moratti himself plays Margherita’s brother, embodying the ineffectuality usually ascribed to the women in a male-cantered drama. The devoted son takes a leave of absence from his job, then quits it altogether, despite being warned how hard it will be for a man his age to find another. Driven to fulfil the noun, devoted son, he withdraws from the constructive and responsible verbs  or actions, leaving himself helpless.
     The last word of the film is Margherita’s memory of her mother saying “Tomorrow,” when asked what she’s thinking. Her daughter and granddaughter have learned from her how to face the future. Her son backed away.