by BERTIE MANDELBLATT

The press kit calls Comment ma mère accoucha de moi durant sa ménopause a contemporary drama. But after sitting through it, it feels more like a whiny, pity-the-disenfranchised-male tirade-cum-comedy, produced by a Quebec film funding body with too much money.

With a big budget and high production values, this film is glossy and well-acted, with some big-time local stars. Patrick Huard plays a bad-boy bimbo and Micheline Lanctôt plays the film’s maternal emotional centre.

Comment ma mère sets itself up as a comedic battle of the sexes. It explicitly addresses male-female relations as it follows the central character, played by Paul Ahmarani, who is completing an MA thesis on how men perceive women "after the feminist revolution" (no, I’m not kidding). His thesis is based on a series of videos he shoots of male acquaintances who complain tirelessly for his camera. And the relationships he has with women illustrate his findings, and are the source of the rather lame humour the film tries to drum up.

Raised without a father, Ahmarani still lives in Outremont with his mother, an abrasive, domineering, yet charming librarian(!) and his sister. He is having an affair with his therapist, has sex with every woman he sees, yet falls in love with a vacuous airhead. Frankly, it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about. Ahmarani is only remarkable for being utterly nondescript, and for his oddly absent eyebrows.

The film is clearly concerned with how his female entourage manipulates him, sidelining him from the only activity we know women really care about: having children. The conclusions of Ahmarani’s thesis? It’s all that power that women have today! Look around you: all you see is women with sooooooo much power; is it any wonder the world has gone to the dogs?

Funny, eh? Stay home and watch some mediocre French TV. Trust me, you’ll laugh harder and longer. :

Comment ma mère accoucha de moi durant sa ménopause opens Friday, February 7

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