08/08/2024 - Mar Coll’s third feature is a close-up take on postpartum depression, teetering between feminist drama and psychological thriller

Having “specialised” in family relationships and the assertion of personal female freedom through her previous films Three Days with the Family [+see also:
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film profile] and We All Want What’s Best for Her [+see also:
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film profile], Catalonian helmer Mar Coll gets even more intimate by attempting to dissect the complex emotional palette of a new mother’s attitude towards her newborn baby in Salve Maria [+see also:
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interview: Mar Coll
film profile], which has just premiered in the International Competition of the Locarno Film Festival. Pushing the boundaries is also a typical characteristic of Coll’s cinema. Based on Basque writer Katixa Agirre’s novel Mothers Don’t, the film adopts the perspective of a mum who struggles to accept her child and the creeping thoughts that haunt her throughout her unfamiliar, lonely state. Meanwhile, the apt film title, Salve Maria, emphasises the character’s heroism and martyrdom, complemented by the mournful and exhausted expression of the actress in the title role, Laura Weissmahr, but it also conveys a subtle critique of the idealised image of motherhood in Catholicism.

The plot follows aspiring writer María, tied to the baby and its stroller, through her overreactions, anxieties, and a quiet but fierce battle with everyday practicalities, exacerbated by the little sleep she gets in these first few weeks of the next stage of her life. Breastfeeding is painful, the baby keeps vomiting up her milk (which no one except her sees as an issue), the old window frames in the cramped apartment do not even allow the windows to be closed, and the always busy, often absent, dad, who keeps putting off his paternity leave, never finds the time to fix them. The life of a writer, whose intriguing inner world and imagination engage the audience, is drowned out by her caring for a defenceless being; her ego is mortally wounded. Adding to the possibility that her tedious reality might eventually turn into a nightmare is the media's overblown coverage of a French woman who drowned her ten-month-old twins in a bathtub. María becomes obsessed with the case and, like in Hollywood movies, starts cutting out newspaper articles in secret and trying to write down her most horrific fantasies, accompanied by hallucinogenic visions of her own body distortion. Beyond having a therapeutic effect, this seems to be the turning point where the drama subtly shifts into thriller territory.

Despite the deftly written, suspenseful script (co-written with Valentina Viso) and the masterful way of conveying the protagonist’s volatile emotions, what feels utterly superficial is the extreme focus on the symptoms instead of making an attempt to analyse the reasons for the character’s emotional breakdown in any greater depth than the obvious lack of personal time and the expectations around motherhood imposed on us by society. It seems easier to question motherhood itself instead of, for example, the consumerist logic of modern life or everyone’s extreme narcissism that makes the natural act of childbirth feel so unnatural, while its traumatic aftermath – which is nevertheless necessarily turbulent to enable an existential transformation – is presented as an insurmountable obstacle. This also predetermines the impulsive and immature ending that attempts to “solve” the problem by distancing, rather than reconciling, mother and child, thus glossing over the issue instead of addressing it on a more fundamental level.

Salve Maria was produced by Spain’s Escándalo Films and Elastica Films. Its international sales are handled by Belgium’s Be for Films.