Smartly crafted mystery film set in a small town of Estonia where everyone is thinking of something big. Elsa (Tina Malberg), the mother forced to give up her job to care for her unconscious teacher son Lauri (Slim Maten). Stuck in a dull marriage with Arvo (Andres Tabun), she’s been having an affair with Aarne (Andres Noormets). In between confessions and tears, Lauri’s friends, girlfriend, admirers and the town’s local policemen all ask the same questions: who shot him and why? And where is that money he withdrew shortly before his attack? Elsa’s life is, in short, not her own. It is claustrophobic, suffocated, and determined by the demands of the men around her. One by one, people knock on the door to come visit him. Each character sits by his bed,talking to him. This includes Lauri’s friend Andres (Jaak Prints), whose failing company needed a cash influx; girlfriend Liina (Katrin Kalma); and his student lover Riin (Rea Lest), perhaps the only person not interested in the missing money. But as the police inquiry into the crime progresses, some of his closest ties are interrogated. Unfolding at a rapid pace, Mother is structured as an episodic series of house visits to the unconscious Lauri, and mostly played for deadpan comedy with lightly noir-ish touches that darken as the plot grows thick. Director Kadri Kõusaar carefully wrote a script that slowly pieces together the truth behind Lauri’s shooting through his visitors’ confessionals to the comatose protagonist.
debarshithecinemaniac 