Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): The ties that bind--and break. . Roger Michell's "The Mother" ranks with "Cries and Whispers" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night" as one of the most unpleasant, profoundly disturbing portraits of a dysfunctional family ever put on film. It is also undeniably brilliant at showing the frayed knots of family loyalty that only need one good shock to break irrevocably. Hanif Kureishi--an old hand at making audiences squirm--tells the story of May (Anne Reid), a sixtyish housewife in a semi-rural English town, visiting her children in London with her husband Toots (Peter Vaughan). Ten minutes into the movie, Toots dies, leaving May totally at a loss. As the film makes plain from the beginning, May's life has revolved entirely for decades around caring for Toots. At first we think the film will be a poignant study of a woman's grief. May doesn't want to go back to her empty house, but her children plainly don't want her around: her son Bobby (Steven Mackintosh) is a cold, self-centered businessman, and her daughter Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw) is a needy, whining neurotic who blames her mother for nearly everything that's gone wrong with her life. We think the story will be about May's learning to stand up for herself and make a new life. (When Bobby asks May not to be difficult, she stiffens and asks, "Why shouldn't I be difficult?") But then May meets Darren (Daniel Craig), Paula's sexy, moody boyfriend and a man half May's age, and from then on all expectations fly straight out the window and land with a crash. I wish the publicity for the film didn't reveal what happens between May and Darren, but even so the impact of it assaults the audience like the punch in the face Paula eventually gives May. If the movie were just about an elderly woman's sexuality, it wouldn't be so shocking; what shocks is May's selfish betrayal of Paula, and the brutal fashion in which Paula discovers it. At that moment we lose all our moorings as an audience, and have no idea who among the characters to side with, if anyone. We still have sympathy for May--as we don't for the patently hateful Paula, Darren and Bobby--but we also gasp in horror at her heedless behavior, and get an idea why her children turned out the way they did. "The Mother" is hard to sit through, and also hard to forget.
Output (English): POS