A tomboy daughter looks for her suffering mother’s former lover in order to get a smile back on her face in Carine Tardieu’s La tête de maman (In Mom’s Head). Clearly about an adolescent girl but not only aimed at girls or even adolescents, the film seduces with a surprisingly dense narrative and a decidedly French take on the role of extramarital affairs and everyone’s undeniable right to happiness. Despite some moments of magical realism and its occasionally child-like vision of the world, La tête de maman comes off as a more than grown-up debut feature for Tardieu and offers another showcase for the talents of Karin Viard as the mother.

 

The film’s strong opening sequence introduces 15-year-old Lucille (Chloé Coulloud), who explains she only wants to be called Lulu or -- even better – be left alone an not called anything at all. A cute classmate (Arthur Ligerot) rises to the occasion and promptly finds himself on the schoolyard floor with a nose bleed and Lulu all over him, punching him wherever she can. When a schoolmaster finally pulls her off, the boy calls out with self-satisfied smile: "Lucille!" The girl then returns home and explains in voice-over what she thinks is happening in her depressed mother’s head; Juliette (Viard, Le couperet / The Ax) has been obsessed with her dead fire fighter father whose body was never found, and with all the other dead relatives stretching back for centuries.

 

These introductory minutes immediately paint a picture of Lulu as a combative and curious kid who tries to understand the world around her with whatever limited means she has available. Though Tardieu, who co-wrote the film with screenwriter Michel Leclerc, indulges in some richly detailed fantasy sequences -- for example showing all the dead relatives in period garb in a long row that ends with Lulu and her mother – the kernel of the narrative is more real than many films about adolescents. This is not a rose-coloured version of the world in which minor teenage issues the size of pimples are ironed out during a couple of montage pieces set to easily digestible pop music.

 

There are moments Lulu wishes her mother was dead, though as soon as she discovers that "Juju" knew happiness before her birth with Jacques (Alexandre Fogelmann in flashbacks, Kad Merad in the here and now), a man who is not her supportive and caring father (Pascal Elbé), she decides she must find that man and see if he can still work his magic with her mother twenty years later.

 

The semi-autobiographical film is anything if not a product of a liberal upbringing. Parents and children smoke pot, swear frequently, drink alcohol, walk around naked, have sex and illegally drive cars -- all without repercussions. Though conservative audiences might frown at all this behaviour as one might do at the weird behaviour of primates in a zoo, Lulu’s insistence on bringing her mother together with a man that is not her father does make sense in the context of the film.

 

Tardieu makes it perfectly clear that what drives Lulu is not a wish to destruct her parents’ marriage but simply to do what is the best thing for her ill mother. A very short scene in which father and daughter share a beer in a bar is really all the explanation that is needed, while careful plotting in the latter half of the film finds the perfect resolution and offers a strong sense of closure. (The reason for the break-up between Jacques and Juliette has a facile explanation that is all but glossed over, but from Lulu’s point of view this makes sense – this is not what interests her.)

 

Coulloud is fine but lacks that spark that might one day make her a star, while Merad, Elbé and Jane Birkin (as herself and Lulu’s imaginary substitute mother) offer fine supporting turns. It is Viard, however, who attracts attention with her layered performance as the ill mother who once knew happiness and might find it again… over a shared passion for animal droppings.

 

This film was screened as part of the 2007 RomeFilmFest and contains some previously published material.

 

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