I’m over mother’s ruin

CLIMBING THE gangplank to their cruise liner, they make a charming sight — the bubbly middle-aged woman laughing with the mother she’s taking on holiday, still sprightly and beautiful at 93. But behind this pretty picture lies an ugly shadow, one ruined childhood perpetuated by another, a relationship which has left lasting scars and taken a lifetime to resolve.

Mildred Kirschenbaum was the Jewish “Mommie Dearest”, according to her daughter Gayle, whose searingly honest film recording their difficult life together,

is being shown at JW3 next weekend. It’s a sizzling watch, d r a p i ng h a r r o wi ng events in a veil of black comedy with the aid of nostalgic home movies, contemporary footage of bitching and bickering and a strong sound-track — aptly, considering the resemblance of the ageing Mildred to a caustic Larry David, in

Mildred is portrayed as an elegant narcissist who bullied her daughter long into adulthood over her big nose, exuberant curls, heavy New York Jewish accent, failure to bag a husband and other imagined shortcomings.

Worse, she apparently coerced her sons into helping perpetuate the torture: “I lived in fear of what she would do to me… being abused from the get-go while my brothers were being loved and adored, my thoughts were that I must have been adopted,” confesses Gayle, who could not even look to her father for protection. She describes him bluntlyas“theGermanShepherdmy mother sicked on me.”

This misery memoir is so brutal in places you’d think it was exaggerated, were it not for on-screen Forgiven : Gayle and Mildred have dealt with a terrible past Above: A young Gayle in a rare happy moment confirmation from her brother Irwin: “I remember going nuts with Mom for how humiliating and mean and cruel she was — what she did to you,” he relates. And then there’s the testimony of Gayle’s school friend: “Intrusive, disrespectful and scary… this loud, shrill voice in the background — to be avoided”.

As for the perpetrator — Mildred herself — she explains: “One reason I may have not been nice to her as a child is that she was a bitchy little girl growing up.”

But Mildred does not regret what she did to the teenage daughter who came home late from a date: “When I saw her drive up with a boy I threw a glass of water in her face.”

What she doesn’t seem to remember is the cruelty of her words, which have stayed imprinted on Gayle’s mind: “She told me: ‘I don’t care if you get raped, if you weren’t already,” recalls the 61-year-old quietly, still smarting 45 years after the event.

“Then she had me go up to my bedroom, ripped everything out of my closet and screamed at me to put it all back.”

The film — which ends in redemption as Gayle manages to drag Mildred to a psychotherapist for a public dissection of their relationship and explains how she learned to forgive her — has become a small sensation, particularly in the Jewish community.

“People who have seen it send me emails from all over the world, saying: “When are you coming back? I have friends who NEED to see this film,” laughs the award-winning film-maker, who has won a handful of prizes on the festival circuit for This prompted both the programme director of JW3 and Debra Brunner, founder of charity The Together Plan, to book screenings following the Kirschenbaums’ disembarkation at Southampton from this year’s mother-anddaughter trip.

“We’ve t r a v e l l e d together every year but one since 2006 — but that started long before I forgave her,” explains Gayle, who claims that the only permanent attachment she had been able to form was with her late, belov- ed dog, following a succession of relationships she fled from. “I could never face repeating that feeling of being hurt, the rejection I lived with as a child,” she explains.

“I didn’t want my mother to come with me to the film festival in Avignon to which I was invited 10 years ago, but she insisted. My father had just died and, for the first time, after 63 years with this man, she was suddenly alone — what could I do?”

Gayle had done a good job of getting away from the source of her misery up to that point: “As soon as I turned 17, I got on the next train out and headed to university,” says the woman who is also an accomplished artist and writer (cue that shot many of us will relate to of Mildred proudly showing off Gayle’s

Her only long love was with her late, beloved dog