La scomparsa di mia madre

This is either the cruelest act of matricide ever perpetrated on film or a deliberate attempt by a mother to make a "filmmaker" out of her no-talent son. It's difficult to tell whether Benedetta is in cahoots with her figlio from hell and acting the part of a cantankerous, demented, maladjusted, sporca vecchia for his benefit and ours, or whether this film is for real, and she is really out of her mind. In either case, the cruelty here is obscene. We see an old lady, wrinkled like a prune, going non conformingly about the business of life, coughing her lungs out from years of cigarette abuse, living in absolute filth, and admitting to hardly ever changing her bed sheets and not having showered in two weeks. You can actually, just from looking at her, smell how she stinks of body odor and cigarette smoke, and this isn't Odorama. It becomes impossible to develop any sympathy or empathy for her, or for her obsessive, abusive son. The film is as filthy as its subject. Skip it.