Mother Schmuckers, 2021.
Written and directed by Lenny Guit and Harpo Guit.
Starring Harpo Guit, Maxi Delmelle, Claire Bodson, Mathieu Amalric, and Habib Ben Tanfous.
SYNOPSIS:
Issachar and Zabulon, two brothers in their twenties, are supremely stupid and never bored, as madness is part of their daily lives. When they lose their mother’s beloved dog, they have 24 hours to find it – or she will kick them out.
It’s tough to imagine a more divisive film coming out of this year’s Sundance than the feature debut of Belgian filmmaker brothers Lenny and Harpo Guit. Setting the tone in an opening scene where our protagonists fry a hunk of feces and take a bite out of it before their mother literally vomits the movie’s title on the screen, Mother Schmuckers‘ wilful assault on common sense and taste alike is undeniable shock value comedy at play. But in its better moments, it also proves unexpectedly endearing through its playfully fucked-up transgressiveness.
What passes for a plot here involves two man-child brothers, Issachar and Zabulon (Harpo Guit and Maxi Delmelle), being given an ultimatum by their prostitute mother Violeta (Claire Bodson) to retrieve the missing family dog, January Jack, within 24 hours or be thrown out of their dingy home forever.
What follows is an urban sprawl odyssey defined by its unrelenting parade of sights offensive to both the eyes and general human decorum; there are fart jokes, a pigeon is shot out of the sky, and a maggot-infested burger is unintentionally chewed upon.
This is to name just a few of the gross excursions throughout, not to forget a peanut allergy gag with a punchline so revolting I can’t even bring myself to type (or spoil!) the outcome. It amounts to a fecal-spiced stew vile enough that anyone within earshot of the film’s video stream will likely crave a shower. And so, Mother Schmuckers is certainly well-placed within Sundance’s “Midnight” strand where it could find a cult following.
If it’s hard to blame anyone immediately turned off by its aggressive desire to offend, there is at least an appealing frenzy to the Guit brothers’ filmmaking, touting the sort of excitingly unpredictable tone and aesthetic of the Crank films – like that series’ sequel, a gun is forcibly shoved up a man’s anus here. And at just 70 minutes in length, it evaporates in a fiery mist long before it can ever outstay its welcome.
There’s a charmingly unvarnished, perhaps uncaring quality to the film’s production – a take-it-as-you-find it, seat-of-your-pants directorial style, where it seems that much of the chaos was likely filmed on Belgium’s streets without permits.
Abetted by the spirited, go-for-broke central performances of Guit and Delmelle, the overall vibe is one of two brothers making a home movie with just a little more money than your average YouTube skit. Impromptu asides, often captured on low-fi consumer-grade handicams, only enhance the grottily scuzzy, thrown-together look.
Comparisons to John Waters also emerge when considering the wider cast, many of whom are natural enough oddities as to feel like non-actors plucked from the local area – perhaps even people randomly stumbled upon over the course of the shoot. And so amid all this, audiences may be surprised to see the great Mathieu Amalric make a brief third-act cameo as the brothers’ father.
It all contributes to a manic liveliness audiences are likely to find either irresistible or irritating with little room in-between. Yet like a live-action cartoon, it never sticks in one place for too long across its scarcely feature-length runtime, so committed to maintaining a clippy pace that dialogue is occasionally cut off mid-sentence. What would Godard make of this?
Yet even those able to accept the formal sloppiness on offer may bristle up against the industrious effort to upset; if not the dated gay panic jokes, then extended sequences centered around bestiality (and even worse treatment of animals) and necrophilia. No matter the thick layer of irony blanketing the entire movie, many are likely to see it as the brothers simply trying too hard to see what they can get away with.
And so, nobody could really be judged for dismissing the venture out of hand for its sheer stomach-churning content; for every laugh-out-loud moment there’s a gag-out-loud one. You won’t find good taste here, but a feverishly propulsive energy and snappy runtime ensure Mother Schmuckers has the potential to become a shamelessly demented cult fave. And if you did in fact enjoy it, make sure to stick around for a loony extended post-credits gag.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
