The film ‘Do you become a mother when you give birth?’ directed by Carmen Jaquier and Jan Glassman is about a woman who tries to find herself after becoming a mother. So far it has been one of the few films that have dared to confront the idea of women giving up on being mothers, besides The Lost Daughter.
The movie starts with Diane and Martin in bed together. They are very much in love. She is pregnant. They share tender moments.
After she gives birth, though, something is wrong with her. He is beaming. Why doesn’t she feel the same? She looks at her child like it’s an alien and halfheartedly sings her a lullaby. She doesn’t have that immediate connection so she leaves the Zurich clinic without telling anyone and gets on a bus that won’t stop until it gets to Benidorm.
Terrified, she digs at the earth with her hands until they hurt and buries her phone while it rings again and again and again somewhere she can’t see it. Milk leaking from her breasts later, back in a hotel room, she squeezes it out painfully onto the carpet like some kind of bodily horror show before picking up the phone in there only for Martin to be on the other end because he found her again so this time she throws away everything else including all forms of identification then goes walking around aimlessly through different parts of town until eventually ending up elsewhere entirely still within Benidorm but shot differently; now everything looks like it belongs inside a kaleidoscope or funhouse mirror maze where some old guy recognizes her from earlier that night as some kind of hooker or something but there’s confusion over how much money he owes so they settle on him giving her his jacket instead which she runs off with while shouting: “DO YOU THINK I’M A MONSTER?”
Upon returning to Zurich for a short period of time, she doesn’t tell anyone about her return but hides from her family in secret places. She only feels attached to Rose and can’t get through her on phone so she decides to come back to Spain by hitchhiking. When she gets home at last, it turns out that they are moving everything out of Rose’s flat. The woman introduces herself as Mona, who is the very daughter that was abandoned by Rose many years ago. Resentful of her mother’s decisions as it were, Mona shows Diane what awaits her later on in life.
Having no direction, Diane embarks on another set of unplanned adventures which ends with her being arrested. Martin comes down to Benidorm where he pays for her release while demanding an explanation from Diane concerning where she had gone missing all along. She tells him that she is not a mother and does not want the baby either. Despite everything however still being in love with each other, they spend one final night together dancing and laughing through rainy streets of city. What kind of landscape would I find inside you? asks Diane from Martin. A landscape from his childhood responds.
In the morning when she wakes up Martin has taken off again; she has gone full circle once more back in bed but without child or partner this time round; now alone; now free.
Les Paradis de Diane has its international premiere within the Panorama programed at 74th Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale).
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