The Eyes of My Mother (Borderline Films, 2016)
The Eyes of My Mother Will Make You Feel for the Killer
The Eyes of My Mother (2016) is writer/director Nicolas Pesce’s debut film, feature or otherwise, but something this affecting and beautiful has no business as a first effort. (Literally the only other credit listed on Pesce’s IMDB page is “miscellaneous crew” for the remake of the Mel Brooks classic The Producers (1967), starring Matthew Broderick instead of Gene Wilder.) Young horror filmmakers tend to either go for something brutally self-aware—dumb fun—or, in a genre overflowing with homage, wear their influences on their sleeves. But Pesce has created something truly singular that can still make you squirm.
At the beginning of the film, Francisca (Kika Magalhaes) is a young girl living with her parents on a farm. Francisca’s mother worked as an animal eye surgeon back in Portugal, and she teaches her daughter the trade (we get to see her remove a cow’s eye in full slimy detail). But Mom gets brutally murdered quite early, and we soon jump forward to our main character as a young adult, now caring for her aging, dying father. The rest of the film portrays Francisca’s desperate attempt to replace her parents, not necessarily with another mother or father figure, but someone—anyone—to be close with. When this doesn’t go well, she keeps them close by in… other ways.
Now, a misunderstood psychopath who only wants a friend may sound like a joke of a premise birthed in a room of aspiring filmmakers who have had a few beers; and, in less expert hands, it certainly would have become silly. However, such a summary proves reductive and unfair to the film. I didn’t even realize until very late on that I was watching a serial killer-POV movie; she was just a person to me. Francisca is presented as a very isolated being without the opportunity to understand her relationship to the outside world, and the film turns into more of a nicely contained character study of this broken human than the usual genre scare-fest. The Eyes of My Mother has much to say about loneliness and the innate need for human connection, and it allows us to feel real understanding and empathy.
Shot in black and white, cinematographer Zach Kuperstein creates some truly stunning images. Some of the outdoor shots (much of the film takes place inside the farmhouse or the barn) look like an impeccable gothic portrait, speckling our prolonged dread with a dark beauty. Both with the inside and even with these exterior settings, the lighting feels like something over which the filmmaker has total control. I always felt like I was seeing exactly what I needed to see in the extremely shadow-heavy sequences that come about. A lady in chains emerges from the black, almost an abstract composition due to the blank background, but because of the film’s smart sense of space, exacting detail, and tight pacing we can enjoy the disturbing view free of the confused boredom so prevalent in lesser art house cinema. This sense of control permeates all aspects, even as the camerawork gets riskily inventive. Sometimes the camera stays with people as they move, like a tracking shot, but it seems to be actually physically attached to them, shaking as they shake in intense moments or undulating with heavy breathing. This technique (I’m not sure how they did it) only adds to the theme of the need for intimacy, getting us closer to characters than simpler means could ever do. The practical effects mesmerize as well; at one point the camera lingers on a close-up of a recently made eyeless person, and it’s terribly convincing—the film does not shy away from detail. I hope I do not undersell the creepiness amidst my swooning over more feel-good-sounding merits. The viewer is relentlessly tested, and the violence is all well earned and visceral and intensely alarming, though also muted and desperate, lacking a shock value due to the choice to shoot black and white.
The film stays with Francisca the entire time, so Magalhaes’s acting is vital to the audience’s reception and whether we empathize with her. She gives an impressively varied performance, most of the time putting on the calm and calculating demeanor of a typical horror movie psychopath. But when this façade falls, boy does it ever. Francisca’s moments of anguish due to her loneliness are heavy hitting, especially with that profound contrast to how we normally see her. Here, however, lies my only small grievance, because as the film gets into the third act, it does begin to hit you over the head in these moments. I would like a little more subtlety—I don’t need her to directly say how she misses her mom over and over that late on in the film.
For the most part however, this affecting character work makes the payoff really strike. (The panicked despair in Francisca’s eyes as a woman who comes home with her from a bar decides she should totally get out of there has stayed with me). The failed attempts at closeness with other humans lead us to a heartbreaking final sequence that literally had me leaning forward in my seat. Sometimes we just need somebody, it doesn’t matter who, to touch, to hold—and The Eyes of My Mother captures that desperation with sickeningly heightened accuracy.
Author Biography
Zach Villemez is a senior English Literature major at Hendrix College in Conway, AR. His undergraduate thesis is being written on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and he cries without fail upon every re-watch of Rocky.
Mentor Biography
Kristi McKim is an Associate Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies at Hendrix College, where she was awarded the Charles S. and Lucile Esmon Shivley Odyssey Professorship, honored as the 2014-15 United Methodist Exemplary Professor, and nominated for the CASE U.S. Professors of the Year Award. Her publications include the books Love in the Time of Cinema (2011) and Cinema as Weather: Stylistic Screens and Atmospheric Change (2013), in addition to pieces in Camera Obscura, Studies in French Cinema, Senses of Cinema, Film International, The Cine-Files, and Film-Philosophy.
Department Overview
Hendrix College offers a major in English with an emphasis in Film Studies and a minor in Film Studies. This growing program within an intimate and rigorous liberal arts college environment includes a variety of courses in the history and theory of film and media, alongside co-curricular experiences (such as this trip to the New York Film Festival) generously made possible through the Hendrix-Odyssey Program. Extracurricular film-related groups include Hendrix Film Society and Hendrix Filmmakers.
Film Details
The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
USA
Director Nicolas Pesce
Runtime 77 minutes
Follow this link to read the introduction to this set of reviews: https://www.filmmattersmagazine.com/2016/12/15/2016-telluride-horror-show-introduction/
