Out Director Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother Queers Folk Horror
You Are Not My Mother opens on a chilling tableau. A baby stroller sits alone, abandoned on the street, in the middle of the night — only to be spirited away into the woods and toward a burning fire.This haunting image perfectly sets the stage for all that follows, as the film centers on a teen girl named Char (Hazel Doupe), who, although not left in the middle of a street on a chilly Dublin night, is still adrift in her life.
Having been moved up a grade due to her intellect, she has no social connection with her older classmates, who never miss a chance to torture her.
Things are even more precarious at home. Her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) is largely absent due to her mental health struggles, and her father is absent, period.
There is no respite, just gray skies, both literal and metaphorical, hanging too tightly overhead.When Char’s mother goes missing, only to return without explanation and a new, uncharacteristically upbeat attitude, it could be interpreted as a sign of changing luck for the family — but this is a horror film.Instead, Angela’s newly chipper veneer begins to crack and horror, steeped in the storied and chilling folk traditions of Ireland, begins to seep through her carefully crafted mask.Char watches on wide-eyed with terror — as does the audience — as the woman she once knew begins to disappear and in her place is a woman who is a stranger and perhaps no longer human at all.
