Film: "You Are Not My Mother" (2021)

When my aunt was in her early teens she reported having a strange dream. Her mother, my grandmother, was concerned and questioned her closely. The answers confirmed my grandmother's suspicions: she was no longer dealing with her daughter but with a changeling who had been left in her place by the fairy folk. Fortunately my granny knew what to do. She and my grandfather borrowed a car and brought my aunt (or the changeling who looked like my aunt) to meet a man who was wise in the ways of the fairy folk. The fairy man was a Protestant living in a mainly Catholic country; this may have been significant. He did some things and then told my grandparents that the matter was resolved: their daughter would return to her normal state provided they brought her back home without talking to anyone on the way. They had probably anticipated this condition, which was why they borrowed the car in a time when people in their locality still mostly travelled by horse-drawn carriage. So they drove back home and talked to no one on the way.

The most famous Irish case involving a changeling, or the belief that someone had become one, is that of Bridget Cleary, which ended in horror and tragedy. In 1895 Michael Cleary became convinced that Bridget, his wife, had been replaced by a changeling. To recover his wife, he set fire to the "changeling", burning her to death; he seems to have been assisted in this by some of his neighbours. Michael Cleary was convicted of manslaughter, his confederates of lesser crimes. The flames did not recover the real Bridget Cleary from the fairy folk.

You Are Not My Mother, an Irish film directed by Kate Dolan, starts off as a film about mental illness. Teenager Char lives with her mother, Angela, and her grandmother. Her mother suffers badly from depression and is really crushed by it; she barely leaves her bedroom and declares at one early point that she can't go on like this anymore. She disappears, leaving her car abandoned on a piece of common ground in their housing estate. And when she returns she can't say where she has been but seems now to be entering some kind of manic stage, no longer crushed by depression but acting in an increasingly erratic manner. Meanwhile Char is suffering in school, where the tough kids are picking on her and making fun of her for having a crazy mother. And Halloween is approaching, a time when things get a bit strange in the housing estates in which this film is set.

So, so far so bipolar. Except Char's grandmother starts to have suspicions about Angela, suspicions she eventually reveals to Char: the person she thinks is her mother is actually a changeling, sent by the fairy folk in the hope of abducting Char herself, whom they had apparently tried to take when she was an infant.

Now, there are two ways you can go with a film like this. You could be making a film about people with funny ideas and crazy beliefs, in which case the grandmother's conviction that Angela is now a changeling becomes a mirror image of Angela's own bipolar problems. Alternatively, you could have an OMG reveal that "Angela" is actually a changeling. I'm wary of posting spoilers but the fact that You Are Not My Mother is billed as a horror film rather than a psychological drama might give readers a clue as to which way the film goes. And I think maybe this choice was a mistake.

The changeling idea works well as a metaphor or manifestation of mental health issues. Capgras' syndrome is the delusion that a loved one has been replaced by an identical double, with cultural beliefs determining whether the double is seen as a changeling, an alien, a pod person, a foreign spy, an android, or something else. Or the issue can lie with the person perceived as the changeling. I have heard it said that the idea of infant changelings might be linked to the first manifestations of autism. Severe psychiatric illness can also make it seem that a loved one has been replaced by a double. You Are Not My Mother nods to this last approach, with Angela already established as suffering from mental illness and her post-disappearance mania initially seeming like a new phase of her condition. Taking this route, the monster in the film becomes the grandmother, with her crazy idea that fire will get return true Angela in place of the false one. But the film turns its back on that approach with the sudden reveal that Angela has actually been replaced by the fairy folk.

At this point You Are Not My Mother turns into a monster film, with Char being chased by the false mother, who wants to take her away to live with the fairy folk. I would have preferred a different outcome, but your mileage may very. I was particularly uncomfortable with the way the film's ending evoked Bridget Cleary's homicide, but in a way that could be taken as justifying her killing.

And yet for all my grumbling about a pretty fundamental turn the film took, I nevertheless really liked You Are Not My Mother. The characterisation is very strong, with Hazel Doupe as Char, Carolyn Bracken as Angela and Ingrid Craigie as the grandmother all excellent. Jordanne Jones as Suzanne, a classmate of Char, is also very impressive. The film is really stunning in its depiction of bipolarity and the confusion it engenders in the bipolar person's dependents. Char's troubles with her peer group and then her growing friendship with Suzanne (after initial hostility) is very well handled. I particularly liked how a scene where the two share a joint is presented as a bonding experience rather than a prelude to Char's descent into delinquency.

I should also mention that the film uses music very well. Die Hexen provide an eerie eerie electronic soundtrack that also evokes Irish traditional music. There is also a striking scene where Angela (or False Angela) dances in an increasingly demented manner to Joe Dolan's "You're Such A Good Looking Woman".

So there is a lot that I Iiked about this film. I just wish that the film had used the changeling myth as a way of exploring its interesting ideas further rather than going down the monster film road.

images:

Carolyn Bracken as Angela (or False Angela) (RTE: "You Are Not My Mother is an intensely unsettling watch")

Hazel Doupe as Char (Advocate: "Out Director Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother Queers Folk Horror" [This piece is worth reading. I did not talk about possible lesbian subtext between Char and Suzanne as I am wary of seeing all female friendships in films as sapphic, but it seems like the film's director did see it that way.]