"Real Women Have Curves" (2002) directed by Patricia Cardoso

The next movie I want to analyse in terms of mother – daughter conflict is “Real women have curves”. The movie won the Audience Award in Sundance Film Festival at 2002. The film presents a stereotypical, yet believed to be true image of Latino community. It is a story of Latino girl, Ana (America Ferrera) struggling to fulfill her dreams – go to college, focus on her higher education and leave suburbs of Los Angeles where she lives. However, her mother has a different view of the daughter’s future. The movie presents just few days of the family’s life, but we can notice that the conflict was being formed through years. 

Ana is not a typical Latino woman – she is not family-oriented, does not dream about getting married and having children in young age. She pursues the right to live according to her own rules. She believes she is the one who should decide about her future education, lifestyle and boyfriend. However, here comes her mother, Carmen(Lupe Ontiveros). She is even not overprotective. She just wants to control lives of everybody. She had already stopped believing that her older daughter, Estela, would get married and she focused all her hope to Ana, and is sure she knows better what is the best for her child. 

As other members of the family seem to accept Carmen as a “home dictator”, Ana is not afraid of showing her resistance  and taking over the control. But even Ana cannot fight with her mother’s manipulative tricks. Carmen manipulates he daughter feelings by fighting with her in public, pretending to tell her the biggest secret and still complaining about Ana’s weight. In each of these tricks we can notice the mother’s attempt to keep her child at home. Every situation gives a clear message: Ana is an ungrateful child leaving her old and sick mother. What is more, an overweight girl does not match to the “real” world – looking like that she belongs to her ethnic community(fat woman is a rich woman). It seems like for Carmen the marriage is the best that can happen to a woman.

Carmen as a typical Latina matriarch is very conservative. She is sure that all woman has is her dignity and virginity. That pushes Ana to hide her relationship with her (white!) boyfriend. Ana, brought up in a way that makes her very modest about the naked body, fights with her mother’s rules and allows herself a little rebellion – in Estela’s factory she and other workers take off their clothes and reveal their imperfect bodies. 

In all that Carmen’s reluctance to her daughter’s development we can see something more than just keeping her home and following traditions. Carmen is jealous of the opportunity Ana is given. As she says to her husband she has been working until she was 13 and it was always manual work. She tells him: “Now it’s her (Ana’s) turn. She has to work”.

 
What is interesting, Ana’s father is not the main character of the movie. His spouse overshadows him. However he is really proud of Ana and wants her to attend college he does nothing to fulfill her dreams; he does not want to get involved into the conflict. 

Picture:  http://www.filmweb.pl/film/Prawdziwe+kobiety+s%C4%85+zaokr%C4%85glone-2002-35167

The main idea of my work

As I mentioned before, the topic of motherhood is very often presented in American cinema. From the middle of 20^th century, when the television became public and more popular, more and more TV programmes were focusing on presenting typical American family.

However, the American Dream motive and the general cult of optimism oriented that kind of art towards light and simple movies and TV series. And that is why American cinema is still unfairly defined as mindless and not ambitious. In my work I want to prove, that regardless being considered as not ambitious and mindless, American cinema can boast with good motherhood-oriented movies. There are plenty of films discussing problematic mother-child relations. I want to choose 3 and analyse them deeply in terms of distracting mother-child tie, its causes and consequences. I will present how mother’s unfulfilled dreams can influence the way they bring up their children.

I find this topic very gripping because everyone has mother and for everyone the relation with her – even when it is not as good as we dream it to be – is the most important relation of all in our lives. It also tones in my seminary name, Media and Power; the movie is one of the most powerful representative of media nowadays and  motherhood is the greatest power of all.

What destroys that special tie?

Not every woman is made to be a perfect mother. Not every child is an angel. But what happens when those two attitudes meet? When a mother does not want to have a child and a child shows his hatred towards the mother and the whole world? 

Such problem has been depicted in a gloomy and thought provoking “We need to talk about Kevin” (2011) directed by Lynne Ramsay. Eva (Tilda Swinton) has not been dreaming  to be a mother. Her depression stems from all her problems  started by the unwanted pregnancy: complete change of her foregoing life, the end of carelessness and her career. Kevin (Ezra Miller) from the early childhood notices his mother’s dislike. She does not hide it, anyway. There is a very powerful scene in this movie when Eva, exhausted and irritated, shouts to her little son: “Mommy was happy before little Kevin came along. And now mommy wakes up every morning... and wishes she was in France!”.
 

                                         

The little boy grows up in a sense, that he is an obstacle in his mother’s life and career. That is why Kevin feels the great envy after his little sister is born. Celia gets from the beginning what he lacked: the love of the mother, being a longed-for child. That is why he hates her, as he hates everything that makes his mother happy. He wishes Eva to suffer. 

There is no strong tie between Eva and Kevin. The mother does  not know how to find common ground with her son. The boy seems to despise Eva, ignoring her orders and dedicating all his love to the father. The role of the father is secondary, however. The boy uses the dad just to manipulate him and to emphasise who is his favourite parent. This, at the end of the movie, occurs to be just a game: we know that Kevin never loved his family.
 

 Both Kevin and Eva have problems with showing their emotions. The boy notices affectation of his mother. He knows that her behaviour is just a pose and she never shows her true emotions. By his actions he tries to push her to do so. Destroying her room, using emotional abuse and, finally, killing the father and his little sister he wants to not only gain her attention, but also provoke her to reveal her true feelings towards him. He expects it to be hatred. However, their last dialogue “I want you to tell me why” “I used to think I knew. Now I’m not so sure” shows the true power of mother love: he used to think his mother hated him from the beginning. Her visit in jail proves that she always loved him, no matter how did he harm her.