Film Review: Enthralling Performances Make ‘Mama Weed’ an Easy Crowd-Pleaser6 min read
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Adapted from the novel by Hannelore Cayre “La Daronne” / The Godmother, the winner of the Grand Prize for detective literature (French) in 2017. A translator working for the police gets involved in the other side of drug dealing.
Director: Jean-Paul Salomé
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Hippolyte Girardot, Farida Ouchani, Liliane Rovère, Jade-Nadja Nguyen
Year: 2020
Country: France
Language: French, Arabic, Yiddish
Runtime: 104 minutes
Although the story of an unlikely drug dealer is well-trodden territory, French drama Mama Weed still manages to etch out its own path. Cutting through class and race, the film wonderfully solidifies the power of women’s solidarity – although this focus does sometimes come at the cost of other problematic elements emerging.
Still, the fantastic cast of characters, lighthearted tone, and delightful cinematography all make Mama Weed a skillfully-crafted drama well-worth catching. Fans of celebrated French actress Isabelle Huppert will surely delight in her leading performance in Mama Weed.
Adapted from an award-winning French novel, the film sees Arabic-to-French police translator Patience Portefeux (Isabelle Huppert) chance upon a stash of hash (not weed, as the title would suggest) after a failed drug deal. Sensing an opportunity to provide for her mother and children, she decides to cross to the other side of the law to become a drug dealer.
It feels immediate to parallel the story to the popular television series Breaking Bad, especially the similar beats. Much like the series’s protagonist, Patience’s meek demeanour turns out to be an excellent disguise for her operations, while also engaging two bumbling street hustlers (complete with peculiar nicknames) as her main connections.
Fortunately for Paris, Patience doesn’t have a Walter White-sized ego and isn’t interested in building a drug empire; her goals are a little more sympathetic. How she came to possess a room full of weed is with her sabotaging her colleague’s efforts to arrest a drug trafficker once she realises he is the son of her mother’s well-meaning nurse. While Patience isn’t in absolute need of the money, her goals with selling the acquired hash are to pay off the rent, her dying mother’s nursing care, and to support her daughters’ future.
Throughout Mama Weed, crime is seen as a necessary response to systemic oppression – mainly of the patriarchy. Patience quickly reveals that her family and her dead husband had a chequered history with crime. She also engages the help of her Chinese landlady (Jade-Nadja Nguyen) to launder the drug money, who is involved in the business for her own altruistic reasons. Overall, the film does an excellent job in this portrayal, although it would be a form of layered empowerment that would be rather narrow.
This shattering of ethnic lines does not extend beyond women. There are quips here and there about xenophobia but the film’s commentary relies mostly on prior knowledge and investment on French societal issues. Without it, the film can come off as only paying lip service.
The most controversial aspect of Mama Weed emerges with Huppert’s Arab wear disguise whenever Patience takes on her persona of ‘La Daronne’ – a getup which, frankly, might draw her more suspicion in France. The greyness of crime isn’t applied for the Middle-Eastern characters as well, with one group earmarked as the film’s brutish antagonists and even with the pair Patience engages for her drug sales getting the very short end of the stick by the film’s conclusion.
Mileage with Mama Weed will vary with these concerns in mind, together with a few eyebrow-raising leaps in narrative logic. How Patience evades arrest comes with both her job and the good-will from her colleague and lover Philippe (Hippolyte Girardot), who just so happens to be terrible at his job. Patience is even lucky enough to have a surveillance camera glitch out at a precise, revealing moment. This is where the film’s escapist quality is most present.
These two groups of concerns look to be pushed back to the background with the film’s performance and cinematography. Huppert is spectacular in the lead, especially when it’s an understated role where nuance is prized. Convincingly and delightfully switching personas, she effortlessly demonstrates the quiet strength of her character.
The chemistry she shares with Girardot is equally pleasing, with both actors playfully walking the line of a “Will They/Won’t They” couple. While the film does feel like a daydream without consequences, it is the threat of their relationship disintegrating that will contribute most to the film’s tension. Although character development is mainly afforded to the two lovers, Nguyen as Patience’s landlord is still a joy in every scene she is in, carrying around equal measures of mystique, danger, and affection.
Mama Weed’s technical aspects should definitely be praised too. Fuss-free framings make no qualms about accentuating the cast’s performances, with masterful use of colours and hues adding on to the story’s vivacity. While the film’s beats are predictable, it still manages to hold an even pace throughout with its sharp and trim editing.
The mileage with Mama Weed will vary with how much audiences are willing to push aside the film’s approach to certain sensitive issues and how it is much more interested in being lighthearted escapism than being grounded. These aside, Mama Weed is a clear crowd-pleaser with its enthralling performances and affirming messages of empowerment through solidarity.
Mama Weed is the opening film of this year’s French Film Festival, with 12 screenings throughout the festival’s run. For more information on the screenings’ dates, visit here.
In the meantime, check out the film’s thriller below:
About the French Film Festival 2020
The French Film Festival, vOilah! France Singapore Festival, returns from 6 to 22 November 2020, with its biggest line-up of 37 feature films in a wide variety of celebrated classics and yet-to-be-released films. These will all be presented both offline and online. For more information on the festival, visit its official website here.
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– French Film Festival Presents Its Exciting Lineup of Classics and Yet-to-Be Released Films
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