Goodnight Mommy

**Spoiler Alert**

Directors: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz/Starring: Susanne Wuest, Lukas Schwarz and Elias Schwarz

Goodnight Mommy, or as it is known by its proper Austrian name, Ich Seh, Ich Seh: (I See, I See), is creepy before it becomes disturbing at which point the audience may find itself recoiling from the horrors depicted onscreen. The film may be difficult to watch but it also wields power and the means to get deep under one's skin. Submitted to the Oscar committee as Austria's entry for Best Foreign Film, directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz's story resists our attempts to anticipate its narrative turns, then unveils a twist unexpected and unforeseen.

Susanne Wuest plays a mother who has returned home after having had cosmetic, facial surgery. Her twin sons, Lukas (Lukas Schwarz) and Elias (Elias Schwarz) begin to see her as an impostor; someone not their mother. Their conviction is strengthened by the mother's odd behavior, which includes ignoring Lukas and subjecting the boys to unnerving glances and stares, as well as her cold demeanor and strange walks in the forest. The Mother's sinister-looking bandages also do little to convince them otherwise.

Up until this point in the film, the audience may share the boy's suspicions. We sympathize with them as the story becomes stranger and stranger. Questions about the characters are deliberately unanswered, such as why the Mother ignores Lukas but the latter half of the film clarifies whatever riddles it poses in the first. The second half is also characterized by a significant shift in our sympathies. Convinced the woman living with them isn't their mother, the twins manage to tie her down to a bed, which precedes a brutal, prolonged interrogation process. Hoping to elicit a confession, the boys visit all manner of disturbing tortures on her; many of which will no doubt cause film-goers to squirm.

If one is looking for a happy resolution and a surcease from the hellish images Goodnight Mommy furnishes in surplus, one will be sorely disappointed. It is a film that rewards our revulsion with a visceral, unsentimental and unforgettable story.

In the final act, we discover why the Mother would ignore Lukas; a twist that sheds light on the psychological darkness gripping the family.

Of course what is technically a chamber piece could only be made riveting by a cast willing to sojourn in darkness. Real-life twins Lukas and Elias Schwarz redefine the term enfant terrible with their chilling performances as twins whose fear transmogrifies into sadism. I can't imagine what psychic and physical endurance Susanne Wuest had to summon to portray the Mother but it must have been a grueling ordeal.

Cinematographer Martin Gschlacht (Revanche, Amour Fou) turns the family's home into a cold, Stygian nightmare with grays and whites; only the creepy masks the boys don and the blood that inevitably spills from Mother offer any chromatic contrast.

I saw this film back to back with The Witch (see my recent posting), which made for a fairly intense pairing in a movie-house, Halloween marathon. Whether such a terrific film earns a nomination from the Oscar committee is immaterial but if it does, I pity the competition. It is yet another film I've seen in the month of October that belongs in the year's most distinguished cinema. Though its horror label seems limiting, it is nevertheless appropriate. If the American title suggests something benign, the movie itself ensures we know the difference between a nightmare and a lullaby.