Goodnight Mommy
That timeless subject of folk and fantasy tales, the changeling, gets a nice twist in the Austrian chiller “Goodnight Mommy” as a couple of youngsters begin to fear that their mother has been replaced by an impostor.
It’s not recommended for nervous types — the psychological and visceral brutality here may put you in mind of another Austrian director, the unblinking Michael Haneke, particularly his “Funny Games.” He has called his films “a slap in the face,” words that apply perfectly to this new film by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.
Twin brothers Lukas and Elias (played by real-life twins Lukas and Elias Schwarz) live in a coldly handsome house in the Austrian countryside, where they pass the time with regular kid stuff: playing hide-andseek, holding burping competitions. (Well, mostly regular — they also have a tank full of huge bugs.)
The mood shifts when their mother (Susanne Wuest) comes home from the hospital with her face hidden in bandages. Surgery? An accident? She looks creepy, and starts acting that way. There’s a harshness that the boys don’t recognize: “Mommy wouldn’t do that” becomes a whispered refrain between them. The mother retreats to her bedroom and orders the kids to live on tiptoes — she needs complete quiet.
We feel for the boys. It turns out that Mommy doesn’t even remember Lukas’ favorite song, and she refuses to speak to Elias. Has he done something unforgivable? They find an old picture of her with a woman unknown to them, who looks like she might be her sibling. The boys have secretly adopted a stray cat, which is, to say the least, unacceptable to Mommy.
The movie is clearly building to something very unpleasant, which happens when the brothers decide things have gone too far, and tie their mother, who has recently removed her bandages, to her bed. The cruelty and madness that have been barely concealed come to the fore, as the boys vow to force the truth out of her. And I do mean “force.”
It’s said that the original versions of many folk stories include terrible violence, and filmmakers Franz and Fiala are surely aware of this.
So be prepared. But what may surprise you are some sly bits of humor that emerge as the film slowly tightens the thumbscrews. The directors know how to use innuendo, and also how to punctuate it with jolts, and not of a pedestrian kind. They are skilled at playing with our sympathies, and are aided by effective performances from the three leads.
Very scary and very nasty, the film also springs a major plot twist, and I only mention it because there are viewers who intensely dislike these surprises. To me, they are just a nice way of adding salt to the wound.
This is a deftly made movie — it would be possible to go on and on about the sound design — but it’s so intense and harrowing that it probably should have a warning label.