hellasangel

The film succeeds to shed light into the fallacies of a family, the distancing of the couple, the financial issues, and the stress associated with raising up children. The main actor, Berenice Bejo plays an awesome part of bringing out the feelings of the stressed mother who has put all effort in raising up her children, sacrificing everything else, including her husband. The husband is a secondary figure in survival mode, trying to make sense out of what is happening, occasionally exploding but most of the times playing his share in raising up the kids, of course in a less successful way than their mother and her expectations.

The film shows the natural carelessness of the father, the hate that builds up in the mother towards her husband, the dynamics of parenthood and the impediments of divorce, which encompasses the mother's dream of freedom.

I loved the spontaneous and unsuccessful way the father tries to keep the family together, the mother's unsuccessful effort to keep the kids happy while trying to get rid of the husband, the animal-like behaviors of a failing husband and the moments of bliss in the kids' eyes when they phantasize that their parents could be again together in love.

As in every family battleground the kids are the ultimate losers, without the mother realizing that her alienating behaviour sacrifices her only goal: her kids' happiness. The father, devastated by his continuous failure to link the family ties together, behaves in ways that he regrets and does not realize that it is this behaviour that leads to the withrawal of his wife. The film is very successful in showing this familiar downward spiral and the doomed destiny of a family caught in it.