YOUR MOTHER’S SON (2024) Review
Directed by Jun Robles Lana
I can’t remember the last time I was this uncomfortable even after watching a movie and it’s not even a horror one. But Jun Robles Lana’s latest film, ‘Your Mother’s Son,’ made me uncomfortable without being untrue to its characters, without them being overly dramatic. It’s the kind of film that you want to shake off after watching because of the discomfort its story tells especially about morality. Or at least in the standards of what religion taught us.
It’s probably one of Lana’s strength, writing characters and directing his actors like they were real people. It might sound bad but I wouldn’t be surprised if Kokoy de Santos has experienced everything his character Emman has because there’s so much truth in his eyes and in his actions that you hardly see the bubbly Kokoy in Emman. Sue Prado is one hell of an actress. One of the highlights of the film is when her character Sarah, commanded the two young men to join her in bed. And her face and body language says it all. As Miggy Jimenez’s character Oliver enters the picture, another layer in the relationship between Emman and Sarah and Amy (Elora Espano) unfolds. These characters felt real like they were someone you met in the province or someone you have heard of.
But not only the characters felt real, the setting or the milieu of the main character Emman looked and felt like it was from a memory.
The discomfort gets under your skin longer than it should be. So when you hear the term disturb the narrative, this is it. Your Mother’s Son gets to be one of those memorable experience especially if you’ve watched it on the big screen, watching these uncomfortable realities unfold. It’s an eye opener to how, like director Jun Lana says it, our relationship with our abusers flourish willingly and how that relationship becomes normal in the eyes of the abused. But while uncomfortable, I still believe that these stories are worth telling and should be told and that we may learn from it hopefully to better ourselves and the next generation.
The performances alone will win you but how it crawls under your skin even after the end credits roll. I don’t know how many times my jaw dropped while watching. Lana continuously giving us stories that rock us to the core. As the film ends, I was unsure what to do next. Only feeling helpless of its main character and the promise of life he could have if not for the path his abuser chose for him.
4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS
‘Your Mother’s Son’ is now showing at ElighTEN: The IdeaFirst Film Festival at Gateway Cineplex 18. Rated R-18 by the MTRCB.