Movie Review: Mammoth

Gael Garcia Bernal in the film 'Mammoth', directed by Lukas Moodyson. Photo / Supplied

Moodysson's film drew catcalls at its 2009 Berlinale screening, the first outside his native Sweden. On balance, such a response seems unduly passionate; it might have been more appropriate to snore.

Though technically adroit and nicely acted - Williams in particular gives a delicate and nuanced performance - it's a ponderous, hand-wringing bore.

Its theme is the repressiveness of the economic model that has the Third World doing the First World's housekeeping, but it makes its points so unsubtly and repeatedly that it comes across as grim and strident guilt-tripping.

Williams and Bernal play Ellen and Leo, respectively a trauma surgeon and a gaming website inventor. Their lives of middle-class privilege (the film's title comes from a $30,000 fountain pen, inlaid with fossilised ivory, given to Leo by a business partner) are presented to us as a kind of original sin.

Impossibly handsome thirtysomethings, they live in a boho-chic SoHo loft with their eight-year-old daughter Jackie (Nyweide) and the family's Filipina maid (Necesito). In case your liberal conscience hasn't started twingeing yet, Moodysson has dubbed the maid Gloria and we frequently cut away to the lives of her two kids (Nicdao and Delos Santos) back home where they are cared for by a grandmother and weep buckets for their Mum.

Gloria's hoping to make enough money to build her kids a home and give them an education; we soon know better. And so, eventually, do Leo and Ellen - he, when he takes a business trip to Thailand; she, when she treats a child stabbing victim.

In his three films seen here - the slyly hilarious urban-commune comedy Together; the small-town teen-angst drama Show Me Love and Lilya 4-Ever - Moodysson has shown himself to be a sensitive director with an intense and specific vision.

But Mammoth is all tone and no action, and the tone is relentlessly downbeat.

The film seems content to make its point over and over again without taking us anywhere.

In press notes, Moodysson says Mammoth is "about how all of us on this planet are connected with each other, whether we like it or not. And how we need each other". This will, I am sure, come as a great comfort to all the miserably underpaid immigrant nannies of the world.

LOWDOWN

Stars: 2.5/5
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal, Michelle Williams, Marife Necesito, Sophie Nyweide, Jan Nicdao, Martin Delos Santos
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Running time: 120 mins
Rating: M (offensive language, content that may disturb)
Verdict: A well-meaning bore.

-TimeOut