Hush! | sons and mothers

If you are have ever been the a young girl taken home to meet the mother of your boyfriend for the first time, then Hush is a film that in very many ways, many of you will likely identify with. Hush is not a new film, and is in fact one of the first films in which Gwyneth Paltrow starred when she was younger and just starting out, and though I sense it is likely a film she regrets for it is not a stellar performance, in my view it is a film she should be proud of, for she finally stands up and speaks for the throngs of girlfriends and wives everywhere who have ever suffered at the sarcastic and snippy and controlling hand of a mother-in-law or future mother-in-law. Here, Paltrow stars as the girlfriend of a dashing young man whose mother, played by a truly ravishing Jessica Lange (Martha Baring), is a self-professed “controlling old lady” who has been left her dead husband’s wealth and is alone now on the family estate trying to manage what was once a prize-winning and booming horse business.

Lange’s portrayal as a controlling and jealous mother in law is flawless. She manages to capture all the first blush and charm that first meetings between the prodigal son and his girlfriend often have – all that false affection and niceness, the kisses on the cheek, the “we’ve heard so much about you”, the note of sweetness that strikes us as a bit false because we all know that the mother would slit the girl’s throat in an instant, if for nothing else than for seemingly havening stolen the son from his mommy-dearest. For the girlfriend, for Paltrow in this film, the issue here is that the more the son loves you, the more that boyfriend or fiancé or husband who took you home for the first time to meet the folks loved you, the worse off you will fare with the mother, for all too often the mother plays out her archetypal role and the hooks come out.

Lange is brilliant in the role for she is not the least bit frumpy, but more the older equivalent of Paltrow, blonded and busty, she is a real fertile mama, tending house and shoveling horseshit on the family farm of Kilronan, where, alas, papa passed away long ago when prodigal son was a mere child. How perfectly this paves the way for Lange to play the over-possessive mother with nothing but her family farm (and of course she needs help to manage the place, a guilt trip she plays her hand well), and, pray, with daddy dear dead and gone, who does she have left but her boy? Our own experiences with mothers may not be as dramatic in matters of fact – daddy is likely alive and there is no great family estate to manage and I pray for all of us that our mother’s in law or future mother’s in law are not as psycho as Lange, there is enough fact and reality here to make this film resonate loudly. Note that daddy dear winds up being dead only because mommy dearest killed him years prior, which we don’t find out until the end, because he was on the verge of discovering his wife’s affair with a local horse hand.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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