I love the recent uptick in the use of ‘literally’, applied as a kind of emphasis, instead of ‘totally awesome’ or whatever. Or ‘whatever’ for that matter. This is mostly because I get to say things like ‘I’ve run out of steam…figuratively!’, but any misuse the English language will remain a joy.

In the case of mother! we have our ending, wherein Ms. Jennifer Lawrence’s heart is literally taken by Sr. Javier Bardem. To clarify, using ‘literally’ incorrectly is funny. Using literally literally is not. It is clunky, and a bit sad. Figuratively!

I had high hopes for mother! given the title (I imagined it pronounced by an about to get shot by Elmer Fudd Bugs Bunny) and the utter insanity that was Noah, which I can see now deserved the title noah!  more than this tepid puddle.

My hopes were quickly dashed as the film unrolled as something neither scary nor weird. It uses surrealism as an excuse not to do horror and has the kind of condescension towards true horror films that one would expect from someone who is not fit to hide in the closets and wait fo the cat to jump on them of Get Out, It Follows, or even Ouija 2. And it don’t know shit about surrealism neither.

I would say it’s the worst film of the year, but I don’t want to give it the controversy it so needingly courts. Plus there are a few laugh out loud moments, as the metaphors literally take over the film. When the small house in the middle of nowhere is turned into a concentration camp/police state as Ms. Kristin Wiig appears as a Castroite agent, I couldn’t stop myself laughing out loud. I was seeing the film that got him a B in art school.

Whatever faults of the movie, and they are almost non-existant, as the film never really comes to life at any point being that it is the product of someone who got paid $30 million to tell us about his super interesting dream, and who thinks recounting a dream counts as surrealism…

Did get to experience Salle 1 at the Gaumont Opéra (coté ? – there are three of them). It’s a tardis-like experience, a massive screen in the middle of Paris. It smells like a Toulouse sausage you used to wipe off ass-crack sweat. I love it.

That was going to be a sentence at one point, so you see the risk of not having an editor. I left it in as a warning!

Point being, and I feel this has been missed in the various controversy, Ms. Jennifer Lawrence plays the most retrograde female character since Ms. Dallas-Howard’s in 2015s Jurassic World. The obvious woman is there: existing to inspire the artist, worry about the house, worry about her man, worry about nagging too much, or not enough, to be prudish, to get pregnant and so on. There’s a way to do this, by the way, as Mr. Todd Haynes and Mr. Douglas Sirk have shown time and again.

But what matters, and God I’m getting tired of saying this, is that she exists to happen to. Never making a choice throughout, she simply reacts, is done for and to, and then for. Once she’s given birth and served the only purpose that a woman can, she dies. Characters choosing matters, most of all so I won’t be bored. And for all the advances made in hiring women filmmakers (obviously this is not one of them), let’s see the action up there on the screen please.

Right there. Where I threw the tomato. Literally.