LEONE, MÈRE & FILS

Léone, the owner of a bar-restaurant in a Parisian suburb, is a wisecracking ogress who swings her impressive figure between tables of regulars. All curves, peroxide hair and quickfire repartee, Léone is a woman in a man’s world where her word is law. Among them is her son, Patrick, who is still a child and only has eyes for her. Lucile Chaufour captures this link between mother and son in a gesture of frankness, simplicity and unusual force during a memorable sequence of bickering that epitomizes this symbiotic relationship. But make no mistake: Léone mère et fils is neither a sociological study on the influence of environment nor a plunge into a world of proletarian freaks filmed like an extinct species, but precisely what it purports to be: the story of a mother and her son at a point when their relationship takes an inevitable turn. Because, through a sudden ellipse, we see Patrick grown up, moustachioed, with a cigarette in mouth. He is 20 years old. Never mind where and when these shots were filmed, the story is universal — and, furthermore, these images seem curiously impossible to date, as if issuing from some forgotten family archive. And yet, while the virtuosity of Lucile Chaufour’s staging has the delicacy to efface itself, it is really she we must thank for one of the most beautiful mother-son “couples” in the cinema. (CG) Lucile CHAUFOUR