Materna: Four Stories Told Through a Motherhood Lens Feels Compelling but Underdone

By Linda Barnard

Rating: B

Materna opens with an uncomfortably familiar subway scene. An agitated passenger (country music star Sturgill Simpson, also seen in Queen and Slim) starts with self-pitying asides that quickly escalate. He leans across the aisle and confronts a woman with a sneer. Four female riders look away, into space or at each other, silently willing him to calm down.

Director David Gutnik’s debut anthology follows four New York women who would never otherwise have met, except on this subway car encounter. Their different lives and backgrounds — two are women of colour, two are white — intersect through the shared moment of a chaotic incident.

There is one link: motherhood, whether Jean’s (Kate Lyn Sheil) nagging mom urging her via voicemails and tense phone calls to freeze her eggs, or Ruth’s (Lindsay Burdge) unwillingness to see she’s the origin of her bigoted young son’s attitudes.

Co-written by Gutnik and two of the film’s lead actors, Jade Eshete and Assol Abdullina (the women have penned deeply personal stories for their scenes), Gutnik approaches each part of the quartet with differing tone and aesthetics, striving for a feel of stand-alone shorts despite the thematic motherhood link.

Read our interview with Materna actor/co-writer Assol Abdullina

Some are told better than others in exploring the women’s struggles with asserting themselves and quest for self-determination. They may have success in many areas, but things fall apart with maternal dynamics.

The movie opens with Jean. Wearing a motion-capture suit and testing virtual reality gear in her apartment, she reports sensations in a flat monotone as she goes through a variety of sex-act positions. Her headgear makes her look like an insect, which stirred a chuckle when she reveals there’s a bug in the system just before things go off the rails.

She’s later revealed to be pregnant and there’s a moment when it’s OK to wonder if the story is wandering into Demon Seed territory and A.I impregnation. I wish Gutnik had gone with it.

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Less successful is the awkward face-off between struggling actor Mona (Eshete of the series BILLIONS) and her drama coach (Cassandra Freeman), who relentlessly pushes Mona to go deeper as she works on a scene. It turns out to be an exercise in Mona confronting her own perpetually disappointed mother, who won’t let up on insisting she return to the family’s Jehovah’s Witness faith. To help further drive the ungrateful child theme, Mona is seen watching Douglas Sirk tearjerker Imitation of Life.

As Perizad, Abdullina tells what feels like the most personal story with a return to her home in Kyrgyzstan after the sudden death of her uncle. Abdullina’s elegantly low-key and guarded performance is outstanding.

Ruth’s tale revolves around a lunch table argument that spins out of control after her son is sent home from school for bigoted outbursts. It quickly escalates to an uncomfortable pitch with quick edits driving up the tension. Ruth’s liberal brother Gabe (Rory Culkin, excellent here) has been brought in to try to talk to the kid and realizes going in it won’t go well. Gabe holds his own against his embittered and privileged sister and her do-nothing, opinionated husband until he reaches a shocking breaking point.

Of the four stories, this was the one that left me wanting more, a deeper look at the causes of prejudice that bloom when those urged on by social media blowhards and echo chamber politics feel it’s their duty to counter a perceived political correctness juggernaut.

While Gutnik has assembled a talented cast, the constraints of a 105-minute runtime means the stories feel underdone in places, including anything about that furiously entitled man in the subway. Wonder what was his mother was like?

Materna. Directed by David Gutnik. Written by Assol Abdullina, Jade Eshete and David Gutnik. Starring Assol Abdullina, Lindsay Burdge, Jade Eshete, Kate Lyn Sheil, Cassandra Freeman, Rory Culkin and Sturgill Simpson. Available on VOD August 13.