Motherland doesn't fully succeed on any of its levels. But Doris Yeung's subtle and intelligent debut feature contains enough interesting elements to mark the filmmaker as someone to watch.
Overview
Nesrin is an urban, middle-class woman recovering from a divorce. She’s quit her office job, abandoned her house in Istanbul, and come to the village house of her deceased grandmother to finish a novel and live out her childhood dream of being a writer. When her conservative and increasingly unhinged mother turns up uninvited and refuses to leave, Nesrin’s writing stalls and her fantasies of village life turn bitter as the two are forced to confront the darker corners of each other’s inner worlds.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
Yeung tries to mix a whodunit with a story of explosive family dynamics, but the effort succumbs to a weak script and a one-note lead performance.
Plays like an artsy short stretched to 93 minutes.
Despite its ambitious combination of murder mystery and cautionary immigration tale, Motherland doesn't quite hold together, lacking both the fuel to reach a rolling, procedural boil and the intimacy to simmer with emotion.
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