Mother Mountain

Director: Celina Stang
Starring: Emilie Cocquerel, Fayssal Bazzi, Anne-Louise Lambert, Willow Speers, Jarrah Finnerman, Pip Miller, Damion Hunter, Angeline Penrith
Distributor: Other
Runtime: 105 mins. Reviewed in May 2022
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Coarse Language and sex scene

An Australian story. A young, restless mother and her family move from the city to an idyllic country property at the base of a mystical and sacred Aboriginal mountain (Gulaga, or ‘Mother Mountain’), with the hope of starting a new life.

The mountain of the title is found on the far South coast of New South Wales – the Tilba area – and there is photography at various times of the coast including Bermagui. The mountain is a sacred site for the First Nations people who live in the area, a sense of affinity with the land and a boating presence.

This film is the first feature film by writer-director, Stang, and is based on her own experiences and her relationship with her family. Her intensity is felt throughout the film through her central character, Selene, played by Cocquerel.

At the opening of the film, Selene and her husband, Dean (Bazzi), who has a diplomatic career, are moving from the city with their daughter, Shani (Speers), a youngster who is resentful of having to move from the city and her friends, loving her mother yet clashing with her. There are ordinary scenes at home, meals, taking Shani to school – though Selene frequently forgets to collect her daughter. In fact, the character of Selene is a challenge to the audience, sometimes sympathetic, oftentimes moody, wandering, brooding, intending to write but not doing so, wandering along the shore and encountering a fishing trawler and its captain, Jonah (Hunter). She reminisces about trawling on a kibbutz in her young days in Israel. She joins Jonah and finds the experience of fishing and sorting exhilarating. Her husband doesn’t find it exhilarating – nor does her mother. And we are made aware of the tension between mother and daughter with the mother ringing, not leaving a message, Selene angry and hanging up.

While Shani experiences some bullying at school, she makes a friend, Ren (Jarrah Finnerman) and they bond, sharing their experiences, Selene meets Ren’s mother (Penrith), an Aboriginal family – and happy discovery that Jonah is Ren’s father.

One day, early in the morning, her mother and father turn up, wanting to celebrate Shani’s birthday. There are some explicit angrily confronting sequences between mother and daughter, and whatever difficulties the audience has with Selene, they will have far more difficulties with her mother, a self-righteous domineering woman, sure that she is right. Her husband takes something of a back seat in the disputes. The mother is played by Lambert (audiences, perhaps, remembering that it is almost 50 years since she was Miranda in Picnic at Hanging Rock).

How can a family come to some kind of resolution and peace? Concessions on both sides, or is that impossible? The experience of a death and its consequences? Better understanding of husband and daughter? Or, something of all the above.

It is interesting to note that explicitly Jewish themes have not been strong in Australian films despite the significance Jewish presence in Australia. This film is explicit, using religious language, memories of kibbutz is in Israel, and prayers and the Jewish meal.

Striking to look at, emotionally involving, and challenging.