If you want a movie in Hollywood’s sense of entertainment, this is not it. The pace is slow, and over the whole of the 2 hours very little happens. There is no spy catch or car chase. To stick to realism, the film has no score.
If you want a psychological experiment, well… You are knocking on the right door. This is a voyeuristic “big brother” into the intimacy of a family. An ideal family, as you might think towards the beginning of the movie. The parents are old now, the father is afflicted by illness, but even so, they talk nicely and support each other. The younger daughter lives in the same city and we understand remains in close contact with her parents. The older daughter, Felicia, has left a while ago, but still comes back regularly to the nest. You can’t but be impressed by the amount of motherly love she receives. And then it only takes a missed flight for things to turn upside down. Is there such a thing as “too much motherly love”? The film would argue that “yes”. At times, I felt like screaming at the mother “give her a break!”. With a mother who is too busy to give waves and waves of what she thinks is “tender loving care”, but it’s only done for her to feel satisfied, with no regard for the subject, the daughter’s character ends up broken: she cannot assert herself, has a failed marriage and broken and superficial relationships. All painstakingly revealed scene after scene, in the film’s flawless construction. The culmination is in Felicia’s outburst at the end, which I’m glad I had the patience to stay and watch.
This is not a film for everyone, and even then, it’s not for every mood.
