Maman est chez le coiffeur

Set in 1966, Léa Pool’s Maman est chez le coiffeur opens light and breezy as summer begins for teenage Élise (Marianne Fortier) and her kid brothers. The picture darkens when their journalist mother (Céline Bonnier) announces that if she doesn’t check out of their idyllic country home and take a posting in London, she will die. The impact on the family is immediate. Brother Coco (Élie Dupuis) becomes even more obsessively focused on the go-kart he’s assembling in the garage. More disturbingly, Benoit (Hugo St-Onge-Paquin), who in an early scene shows mom his drawing of her as a powerful queen, smashes toys and tailspins into self-destructive withdrawal. French actor Laurent Lucas (With a Friend Like Harry) plays the father as a fussy medical professional, whose initial reaction to his wife’s abandonment is childish regression. The movie’s fairy-tale atmosphere, complete with its own comical Wicked Witch of the East, is heightened by exquisite visuals of Quebec’s Richelieu Valley.