Mama’s Boy: A Chamber-Piece of Complicated Affections And Rigid Orbits

Jerod Haynes’s Mama’s Boy, written by Ashley D. Smith, is a restrained exploration of the titular kind of relationship. Set within the confines of a park bench, it shows the nascence and evolution of a woman in motherhood. Though bisected, the narrative belongs exclusively to mother and son as they wrangle out the contours of their bond at a time of transformation.

Cameron (Cameron Pitchford) has decided to go to college out of state. On the park bench, his mother Camilla (Sharyon Culberson) is faced once again with departure and a radical change. Nearly two decades ago, she began to learn how to be a (single) mother. Today, she has to reckon with the reality of becoming things beyond motherhood. As Cameron insists on going to New York instead of remaining in Chicago, in his mother’s orbit, Camilla is confronted with the life she has built for herself: her son is her world.

Culberson is a grounding force as a middle-aged mother. There is resentment, the offspring of love, and quiet fear at the prospect of having to start over again as someone new. Culberson puts it all in a very muted performance. Camilla does not bring Cameron into her confidence beyond a point, she does not say in as many words that she is being abandoned once again, despite a Hamlet monologue, but the son is kinder and more intelligent than that. He makes headway, however small, through Camilla’s steely heartbreak.

The stillness Camilla brings is the defining feature of the film. Even the flashback sequence feels it. Shot in a rigid 4:3, it cuts off her partner Isaac’s (Haynes) face. Camilla remembers, even commemorates, only the abandonment. It is a mile marker, a reminder of what must be avoided at all costs. Her face fills the frame, bliss chased away by disbelief. The stoicism of the present day then is this: a refusal to relive mortification even as introspection has become necessary.

Mama’s Boy closes on new beginnings for both its characters but without laying too heavily into saccharine optimism. Having built a simultaneous foundation of affection and bitterness, the conclusion is able to successfully project an open, unknown future that cannot guarantee any outcomes. And despite the logical progression of that, Mama’s Boy manages to be surprising in the end.

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