Hats off to Austria for selecting this increasingly alarming chiller from writer/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (respectively the partner and nephew of film-maker Ulrich Seidl, who produces) as its foreign language entry for the 88th Academy Awards. Opening with an image of Von Trapp family harmony, Goodnight Mommy finds twin boys (Lukas and Elias Schwarz, both brilliant) playing hide-and-seek in the trees and cornfields around a remote modernist house. When their mother (Susanne Wuest) returns from facial surgery, her bandaged visage hides a changed personality. How do they know it’s really her? Suspicion turns to hostility and worse; by the third act, you’ll be hiding your face in wincing terror.
Comparisons with Michael Haneke’s Funny Games and George Franju’s Eyes Without a Face seem inevitable, but tonally it’s perhaps more helpful to think of the fairytale fantasia of Philip Ridley’s The Reflecting Skin refracted through a Seidl-esque worldview, with visual nods to Wolf Rilla’s Village of the Damned, and David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Martin Gschlacht’s superb 35mm cinematography moves from the dreamscapes of the exteriors to the horrors of the interiors with mounting unease, mirroring the “my little eye” themes of the film’s original title, Ich Seh, Ich Seh. Happy Mother’s Day!
