The Eyes of My Mother (SFF Review)

A monochromatic nightmare. There aren't many other ways to some up Nicolas Pesce's debut film. Before the film and the short film preceding it, the curator of the 'Freak Me Out' line of films at Sydney Film Festival stated that the film stuck with him for a while after seeing it, the name and performance of Will Brill and that Nicolas Pesce is an emerging talent. I agree with all three.

The movie opens with a truck driver driving (obviously) along an open road somewhere, where forests dominate the landscapes. He comes along this person in rags and chains in the middle of the road and stops to see if they're alright. Then the main story starts. The main character is a girl whose parents don't live near any towns, probably because they don't want there kid to be raised by the sinful way of live everyone is living, which we can presume as the cross is often seen in their household.

The mother use to be a surgeon on Portugal and what the Dad does is never clarified but the mother's history of being a surgeon has a major impact later on in the film. Not long into the movie the mother is murdered and the Dad locks up the guy who did it in his barn. I won't add too much more to the plot other than when the girl grows up she becomes a killer.

Even with a minimalist approach to the storytelling here the performances really stand out. The aforementioned girl as woman is played by Kika Magalheas and what she does so well in her performance is her use of her eyes. Depending on the scene she will do something with her eyes to create the atmosphere needed. The other great performance of this movie belongs to Will Brill, who even though has a small role at the beginning will leave just as much of an impact on you. His performance in his scenes is a dominating ones and it's creepy even before his intentions are revealed.

Plenty of scenes in this movie move at a slow pace but it's not a bad thing and in fact it's quite the opposite. Pesce's control over the scenes makes for a more suspenseful movie, especially in the silences where as a normal director would've used silences for a dramatic effect. If Pesce didn't use black and white (which was shot by Zach Kuperstein and it's also his first feature film) I think I probably would've chosen another movie to review. It takes out all the emotional stuff most horror movies aim to do (and never achieve anyways) and it replaces it with it's own, one of kind emotion.

Nicolas Pesce's lyrical vision together with the performances that are really given through their bodies creates a horror movie (that won't see a huge distribution as it may be a tad arty for most) that will give you nightmares for long after the credits role.

Overall Score: 10/10

Eyes of my Mother has one more screening at SFF on Friday, 17th of June at Dendy Newtown at 6:15pm. It might see a DVD or VOD release if we're lucky.