“Ama”: the film about a bad mother

Mistress It is a film about women, specifically about the myth of the bad mother. Written by women and shot by them. Mistress is the debut feature of Júlia de Paz Solvas, written with Nuria Dunjó López. Both also created the short film that inspired the film with the same protagonist.

When Julia and Nuria finished university, they were impressed by reading the book. regretful mothers, by Israeli sociologist Orna Donath. A book whose title causes rejection.

Perhaps we imagine repentant mothers as women who abandon their children, negligent and selfish. However, Regretful mothers are only mothers who opt for a more realistic vision of motherhood.because the experience has overwhelmed them without it meaning that they stop loving their children.

What is a bad mother?

We were born with many conventions, social mandates and universal truths that have been imposed on us and not debated. If there is a stronger accusation than being called a “whore” for a woman, it is being called a “bad mother.”

We have always heard that a bad mother cannot be a good person. Assuming this premise, it is understood that any quality of a woman cannot be taken into account if it is not also supported by her role as a “good mother.”

If she were a good professional, a good lover or a great friend, we would assume that she is some kind of woman without empathy, that she is not trustworthy and that any time we spend with her is not worth more than the superficial sympathy she may cause us. A bad mother is not trustworthy.

“Ama”: Pepa’s story

With short shots, camera on the shoulder and little contextualization (we guess that it is Benidorm due to the reference to Penelope), the close-ups of Pepa appear. Played by Sevillian Tamara Casellas, she faces the role of a mother invisible to the world. Her powerful performance has not gone unnoticed and she has been awarded the Silver Biznaga at the Malaga Festival.

Pepa takes charge of a common type of motherhood. A motherhood overwhelmed with only one daughter, when they sell us that you can have five and motherhood doesn’t even mark youlike that slight scar that Pepa has on her belly and caresses without us knowing what she really thinks.

Pepa has two roses tattooed on her shoulders. An unkempt mane, somewhat rough and with the remains of a dye that must have been striking in another era. The skin with the so-called “imperfections” that we each have when we wash our faces at night.

Pepa is the perfect target. The target in which anyone would see all the defects nailed to her forehead. It is logical that things go wrong for him, he has not done anything socially established to make them go well.

The film progresses, and circumstances pressure Pepa. Sometimes the argument gives way and we say “come on, you have a daughter, take care of her!”, while she disintegrates more and more.

the single mother

As children we don’t want to be bad mothers, and many of us don’t want to be single mothers either.. The concept “mother with a father for her children” enters the picture like an arrow shot into the fire within what we understand as a “beautiful, full and stigma-free motherhood.”

The single mother is praised from a mythologized vision or rejected. However, there is a world of options within what we know as a “single mother.” It may be that you have decided to have a child by resorting to artificial insemination with a partner that you do not see as stable in the long term.

Another assumption is that she has become pregnant and her partner has suggested an abortion, but she has gone ahead. Or that she and her partner decided to have a child and that he ended the relationship before giving birth or she did so considering that she did not want that absent father for her child.

She may have had a child alone after a night of sex with anyone. It may be that she became pregnant the day she and her long-time partner decided to say their last goodbyes. There are as many stories of single mothers as there are of accompanied mothers.

The bad mother and the perfect, but unknown mother that they sell us

It may be that we don’t like Pepa as a mother. That from the first plane we do not identify or empathize with her. It is not necessary to be a mother, by being daughters and women we already know what it means for society to be a good mother.

Going to party and leaving your children in the care of others is not what it means to be a good mother. Men do that, responding to their need to go out and relax, but that is not in a mother’s DNA.

The future of Pepa: the similarities with ourselves

After immediately judging it and sitting in a more comfortable place to watch the film, something begins to bother us. Pepa suffers the same thing as the majority of the population: job instability in a job that does not seem to correspond to that of an adult, anxiety and sadness.

Isn’t that an evil that affects not only mothers, but almost entire generations? Pepa’s tears fall when she is with Diego. We don’t know anything about Pepa’s story, which makes us pay more attention to the sequences. Our interest makes them much more interesting.

We see how he looks at Diego, whom he calls “my love” with tears in his eyes. His fierce and somewhat borderline attitude crumbles before we “assume” that he is the father of his daughter.

That father who smiles at his daughter, scolds her mother and walks away, leaving them on the street. Who among us has not suffered for love? Parallel to this, Pepa keeps receiving calls from her mother and we ask ourselves: “why doesn’t she just leave with her family?” But who among us did not leave home with many reproaches to her parents, ready to devour her world, but it devoured her?

Then there is her job, which could change everything, and invites us to reflect on such a childish and unstable occupation, but which of us, overqualified, have accepted jobs for which no qualification is required and for mere survival?

We all have some bad mothers

When we watch Pepa’s story, there comes a point when we may no longer feel moral superiority or compassion for her. Only fear and indignation. From so many invented stories, from so many myths about motherhood. We understand that Pepa who is fed up with everything trying to get air under the sea.

Pepa is the loser in the princess story, the one we never wanted to be when we were little, but the one we are dangerously similar to on some occasions.

At the end of the film, we “forgive” Pepa, our mothers, the girl from that group who became a mother very early and did not manage to give her the father’s last name. We forgive ourselves and we want to hug Pepa and her daughter very tightly.in a true fairy tale, of princesses and some witches.

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