Mia Madre Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Mia Madre Blu-ray Movie Review

Not to be confused with 'Mamma Mia'.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 15, 2016

In some ways, directors are the most inherently comedic types in show business, always thinking they're in charge, but often failing spectacularly to maintain control, either personally or professionally. Neurotic or at least morally wobbly directors have been a staple of the film industry since—well, since the film industry. Stories of various peccadilloes and/or quirks of several iconic directors have become part and parcel of Hollywood (and global) lore. One of my favorite stories (which may be a legend) involves the iconic Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), who evidently liked to receive a bit of oral gratification on set from various female extras during breaks when scenes weren’t being shot. One day he was so involved, without realizing a lot of the crew was still in the hangar up in the lighting array where they had a perfect view of the event. Suddenly seeing them gazing down at them, Curtiz supposedly reached down and smacked the poor female’s head, shouting, “Bad girl!” Another great anecdote involves William Wyler, a kind of fussy sort whose picayune complaints about performances evidently caused him to clash pretty dramatically on the set of Come and Get It with Frances Farmer (herself no stranger to neurosis), to the point that the actress reportedly started chasing him around the set with a flyswatter. It didn’t take that long for those associated with the film industry to start exploiting the troubled psyches of various people involved in making movies (not necessarily “just” directors), with relatively early efforts like A Star is Born starting to peel away the facade of patently fake glamour to reveal the scars underneath. Directors, though, ultimately got their due in such storied films as 8½, and even lesser efforts like The Girl. Two things potentially set Mia Madre apart from other “neurotic director” outings: first, its focal character is a female, and second, there’s a clearly detailed reason for at least some of the psychological issues that Margherita (Margherita Buy) is experiencing— namely, the terminal illness her mother Ada (Giulia Lazzarini) is suffering from.

There’s a telling if rather subtle moment early in Mia Madre as Margherita attempts to film a sequence involving a labor uprising which devolves into violence. In fact Mia Madre begins with this showdown, only revealing in a moment or two that it’s a film shoot, but after Margherita yells “cut”, she gets into a heated interchange with one of the cameramen, asking why he kept zooming in to catch various violent acts in close-up. There’s a perhaps subliminal suggestion even at this early stage that Margherita wants to keep the uglier aspects of life at a comfortable distance.

Margherita’s perhaps slippery hold on the reins of her production are probably at least a little more secure than her lack of control on a more pressing issue—the health tribulations of her mother, who is confined to a hospital bed (rather unhappily), and who is giving in to both mental and physical deterioration. She gets a bit of support from her brother (Nanni Moretti, the film’s co-writer and director), but the siblings are obviously struggling to deal with the impending mortality of their mother.

On the homefront, Margherita is even more of a mess, calling a halt to a relationship with her boyfriend Vittorio (Enrico Iannellio) while also trying to navigate some treacherous terrain with her daughter Livia (Beatrice Mancine), who is struggling in school and also trying to come to terms with the impending death of Ada. In what may see as a sort of semi-allusion to Fellini’s aforementioned classic about an addled film director, Mia Madre exploits the thin scrim between dreams and reality, further destabilizing the audience’s perception of what exactly Margherita is going through.

The film perhaps tips a bit toward farce with the arrival of American actor Barry Huggins (John Turturro), a kind of genial blowhard who likes to drop names of Hollywood icons but whose professionalism is questionable at best, leading to further disarray on Margherita’s set. The everyday ambience of a working film set is rather well handled by Moretti, though the film never really adequately addresses why Barry is in the film (meaning either Mia Madre or the film Margherita is attempting to make). He almost acts as comedy relief, albeit humor of a rather awkward variety, when the bulk of the film seems to pointed more toward quieter, more intimate, ruminations about life, death and work.

Mia Madre wants to cover a lot of territory, and therein lies what may be seen as the film’s central weakness: a tendency to dart to and fro from event to event, whether that be at Ada’s side in the hospital or on the set of Margherita’s film, with the only tether between these elements the inherently frayed character of Margherita herself. It makes for a bumpy ride at times, but the film features some very moving scenes and an especially well modulated performance by Buy. Turturro, supposedly the “marquee” name for overseas (i.e., American) audiences, bites into Barry’s hyperbolic character with gusto, though that means he also chews the scenery in virtually every scene he’s in.

Note: Brian Orndorf gave Mia Madre a somewhat higher score when he reviewed it during its theatrical exhibition than I'm giving it in this review. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

Mia Madre Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mia Madre is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.84:1. I haven't been able to track down any authoritative data on this shoot, but this appears to have been digitally captured, and the results, while not overwhelming in any "wow" factors, are solid and dependable, offering excellent levels of detail and a natural if slightly tamped down looking palette. There's an emphasis on a slightly blue-gray grading in the hospital sequences, something that may remind some of the harsh fluorescent lighting that's often found in such institutions, but other moments, notably some at Margherita's home, are considerably warmer looking. A couple of sequences in cars, including one where Margherita shleps Barry home from the airport at nighttime, are a bit murky looking and don't offer much in the way of shadow definition or fine detail. There are no problems with image instability or compression artifacts.

Mia Madre Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mia Madre features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that receives bursts of surround energy from some of the film set sequences (notably the opening riot scene), as well as a typically eclectic Moretti soundtrack that utilizes a number of interesting source cues (including the recently sadly departed Leonard Cohen). The film's quieter moments, like the many hospital sequences and even some of the interchanges between Margherita and her crew or family, are less immersive but still offer discrete channelization for ambient environmental sounds and the like. Fidelity is fine on this problem free track, one which also offers reasonable dynamic range.

Mia Madre Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Just a Movie: On the Set of Mia Madre (1080p; 42:31) has some good behind the scenes footage.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 9:48)


• John Turturro as Barry Huggins (1080p; 4:06) features scenes of the actor riffing.


• The Torture of an Actor (1080p; 3:45) answers the question of how actors feel when their director is another actor in the scene and keeps handing out "suggestions" throughout multiple takes.


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:22)

Mia Madre Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mia Madre continues Moretti's quasi-autobiographical tendencies, as odd as that may sound given the fact that it focuses on a female director, and I guess one hopes that whatever psychological issues Moretti may himself be facing don't undercut his abilities as they do to Margherita in this film. Moretti's devastating The Son's Room won the Palme d'Or at Cannes years ago, but Mia Madre couldn't quite duplicate that effort, having to settle for the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury instead. This is a noble effort, but I'm not sure it works together cohesively to deliver a cogent message. Still, it's incredibly moving at times and quite funny at others, and Buy is marvelous in the lead role. Technical merits are strong, and Mia Madre comes Recommended.