Rose moves from the Ivory Coast to France with her sons Jean and Ernest. In some ways, this is a coming-of-age film for all three of them.
Rose is very young when the family arrive in France in the late 80s. She moves in with her sister and her husband in a small flat in Paris. Rose thinks the world is opening up for her, she is now in a land of possibilities. And it’s clear from the fact that she already has 4 sons, the older two of which are back in the Ivory Coast, that she has lived a life up until now where a lot of the choices were made for her. When her sister introduces her to Julius, she clearly has this man set up to be Rose’s next husband. Determined to live her own life, Rose pursues her own romances, and refuses to just be a drudge made for work and endless domestic labour.
The second part of the film is about Jean, taking place when he is a teenager in the 90s. Imperceptibly Rose’s defiance has hardened, and her refusal to be shamed for wanting more from her life has led to a lack of self-reflection on how she is raising her children. She is content to let Jean raise Ernest in her absence. She works in Paris much of the time, while the boys live in a flat in Rouen, the hometown of the man who keeps Rose as his mistress. He has no interest in her kids, so it all falls on Jean’s shoulders. As a small boy, he set his sights on becoming a pilot, for which he needed very good grades. On top of this, when asked when his older brothers would join them in France, Rose, knowing they were never coming, made a comment about how it would happen once they were all successful here, and used it as a opportunity to emphasise sticking in at school and getting to the top of the class. It’s clearly a comment that she made off the cuff to deflect from a painful topic, but which buried itself in Jean’s mind. He puts enormous pressure on himself to do well, clearly feeling like all his brothers’ futures depend on him. He resents Rose’s lack of concern when he is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. It can only be a matter of time before something has to give.
Mother and Son is about how, seemingly by degree, unwatched and unknowingly, our choices change the direction of our whole lives. It’s only at the end, when you look back at the road travelled, you wonder how the hell you got here. The film starts with Rose clutching tightly to her boys, her boys burying themselves in her sides. Over the course of the film, you watch those bonds grow in distance, strain and snap.
A really well done film full of sympathetic and moving performances.