The Eyes of My Mother was getting a lot of buzz at Sundance and folks saying it was disturbing and scary. So I checked it out and it really lives up to the buzz. Writer/director Nicolas Pesce has crafted one hell of a debut film.
As a child, Francisca (Olivia Bond) watches a stranger named Charlie (Will Brill) murder her mother (Diana Agostini). Francisca’s father (Paul Nazak) walks in on it, too late to save his wife but just in time to beat Charlie and lock him up in their barn. The lonely Francisca befriends Charlie and becomes obsessed with feeling the thrill he describes from killing as an adult (Kika Magalhaes).
It is disturbing to watch grown-up Francisca prey on vulnerable women, and especially disturbing when there is a baby involved. Equally disturbing is seeing young Francisca relate to the instrument of her trauma. Perhaps her father was too traumatized himself to stop her from doing that, but I suppose he knew what he was doing keeping Charlie alive in his barn.
Charlie is a disturbing character. You can tell from his introduction that he’s bad news and you wish they hadn’t let him in the house, but he probably would have found a way in anyway. When he is reduced to a prisoner, he’s disgusting, with Pesce amping up the eating noises so he sounds like a suckling animal. Charlie is not Francisca’s only prisoner, and she plays on body parts we are all sensitive to: fingernails, eyes, mouths.
The performances are breakthrough. I really hope Bond is well-adjusted after performing the detached morbid interest she achieved. I’m more confident that Magalhaes can leave the work on the set, but she’s pretty convincing disarming her victims. Brill nails that sense that you know something’s wrong but makes you doubt yourself out of guilt. The actresses playing victims (Flora Diaz and Clara Wong) are able to achieve sympathy with little screen time, something that films with even larger ensembles often fail to do.
The Eyes of My Mother maintains a mood and atmosphere of dread. Shot in black and white, the shadows hang over the remote farm house. There are a few time jumps that also contribute to a jarring sense of displacement. The film runs a lean 77 minutes but there is enough material for months of nightmares.
