'Honeymoon with my mother' starts off with a premise that might just have worked as an efficient run-of-the-mill comedy-drama, but despite early promise, it falls woefully short of the mark. A young man, Jose Luis (Quim Gutierrez), gets dumped at the altar on his wedding day.
As his hyper, well-meaning mother goes into overdrive about wedding expenses, José seems to barely register what has just happened. You would expect him to be in shock, but the deadpan look writ large over his face tells a different story. When the travel agency refuses to refund the Mauritius honeymoon package booked in advance for the newlyweds, José’s mother, Carmen (Carmen Machi), convinces him to attend his honeymoon, and with her as his pretend-wife, no less!
While the premise is not particularly original, there is potential for a lot of humour. As decent as the acting is for a film with simplistic writing, Honeymoon With My Mother falls into an uncomfortable middle ground that aces neither comedy nor drama. With the exception of Yolanda Ramos’ supporting role as the overly chatty receptionist who goes off on a tangent when narrating her funny stories, the rest of the humour is predictable and flat.
The dramatic aspects of the narrative may be effective to a certain extent, but a simplified exploration of the Freudian bond between mother and son doesn’t exactly fit this film. Carmen keeps mothering José Luis through the first half of the story, as one would a five-year-old. A scene at the beach involving sunbathing comes to mind; despite his protestations and request for space, she is seen slathering sunscreen all over his face. While this is supposedly meant to elicit laughter, it ends up only discomfiting .
The big problem is that the film isn’t sure about what it’s trying to say, and the characters too needed to be sketched better. Carmen breaks her decades’ old silence on what she has endured as a wife and mother––“Your father had to work, and then you were born; so we couldn’t go on our honeymoon to Paris”; “I go out of my way for you. And what do I get back in return?” She tells her son what she truly thinks of his romantic choices––“Ever wonder why they all leave you? You don’t want a girlfriend! You want a mother!” In one heated exchange, all the underlying tension is brought to the surface, with mother and son going at each other’s throats. For it to have been a serious Oedipal take on the José-Carmen relationship, a heavily altered plot and an enhanced presentation of its main characters might have been the order of the day. Were the writing as effective as the acting, Honeymoon With My Mother may well have been engaging, but the pitfalls relegate this dramedy to mediocrity.
Honeymoon With My Mother
Directors: Paco Caballero
Genre: Comedy
Platform: Netflix
Language: Spanisha