Review « It started with my mother » is based on true history.

When it was believed that the colored melodrama was dead, French « It started with my mother ». The title sounds a little Pedro Almodóvar but Canadian Ken Scott – who made a film of the best -selling autobiography « Ma Mère, Dieu et Sylvie Vartan » – is significantly less subversive.

Scott’s cinematic plus menu follows Roland Perez (in reality a well -known lawyer) in the heels. The little boy is born with a heavily deformed foot in the 1960s Paris. The already child -rich immigrant family, Sephardic Jews from Morocco, has no major financial resources to take care of a disabled child. But they have mom Esther, a nice lady with mouth leather as a bazaar seller and dreams that extend far above the rooftops. She refuses to give up. Her kid is going to go, at all costs …

Roland’s life (as an adult played by worthwhile Jonathan Cohen) will be a roller coaster that never seems to stop spinning. Supervised obstacles, check. Healing idol worship, check. Heavenly love, check. Great grief, check.

The factual narrative voice, which is reminiscent of « Amelie from Montmartre », in vain tries to keep the hectic pace. It swings about this colorful and quite tender vintage party, not talk about it, although it becomes well embarrassed when the singer and celebrity Sylvie Vartan shows up as herself. In addition, partially strikingly clumsy digital rejuvenation.

What still makes it worthwhile to keep up with this fabulous journey through the decades is Leïla Hkti’s colorful Esther. The classic Jewish storm, screwed up to a hundred. A toxic, destructive force that interferes with much needed saltiness in the sweetened, melodramatic cozy. This mother portrait, which in an interesting way questioning the self -sacrificing and boundless motherhood, will live long after the film is forgotten.

See more. Three other films with Leïla Hkti: « A Prophet » (2009), « How I became a superhero » (2021), « Maria Montessori » (2023).

More Film and TV reviews in DN And other texts By Helena Lindblad