Mother

Adaptation of the eponymous short film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, nominated for an Oscar. The movie follows Elena (Marta Nieto), a woman who, after losing her six-year-old son on a beach in France, remains trapped in a tunnel of grief and personal reconstruction. Ten years after that tragic event, Elena still lives on that same beach, working as a bar manager, in a stark apartment that seems more like a transit space than a home. Her life takes a turn when she meets Jean (Jules Porier), a teenager who painfully reminds her of her lost son.

Madre is a psychological drama that addresses grief from its ambiguity and emotional depth. Rodrigo Sorogoyen poses questions rather than answers, inviting the viewer to reflect and fill in the narrative gaps with their interpretation. Just as the fog blurs the boundaries between sea, land, and sky, the film explores the blurred line between reality and Elena's emotional projections.

Elena is never clear whether Jean is truly her lost son or merely a reflection of her despair. The connection between them is presented with an ambiguity that hovers between the filial and the romantic, leaving the interpretation of this emotionally charged relationship up to the viewer. Jean can be seen as a symbol of rebirth or a second chance, but also as a disturbing reminder of how pain can distort our perception of reality.

Marta Nieto's performance is the soul of the movie. Her portrayal is a masterful study of contained pain, of human strength and vulnerability. Nieto conveys with astonishing sobriety the experience of a mother who has not only lost her son but also the certainty of what happened to him. The rest of the cast, including Jules Porier as Jean, does their job effectively, but this is, without a doubt, a film that rests entirely on Nieto's shoulders, who makes the impossible tangible and heart-wrenching.

Visually, Sorogoyen uses the beach as an omnipresent symbol of Elena's loss. The sea, vast and indecipherable, reflects both the absence and the impossibility of finding answers. The visual atmosphere created by the director highlights Elena's desolation, with open spaces that contrast with the darkness of her inner world. The long takes, characteristic of Sorogoyen's style, not only enhance the sense of immediacy, as in the tense phone call at the beginning, but also immerse the viewer in the protagonist's emotional chaos.

Madre is a deeply introspective work that presents the aftermath of a traumatic loss in all its ambiguity. It shows us how what we lose can return disguised, and how from the outside this pain can be misunderstood, even seen as a pathological obsession. Rather than judging Elena, the film invites us to witness her grief and understand that a single moment can change everything: it can take everything away or give everything.