Mammal

Director's Statement

started this film with the idea of exploring an alternative kind of mother, the one who leaves, the one who doesn’t know how to mother. It troubles me that women are typically more harshly judged than men in relation to how they parent or don’t parent their children. This is complex and tied up in a view of the mother as more essential to a child’s development but the result is that her identity is automatically more subsumed by becoming a parent than is the case for men. I wanted to see what the audience could feel about this woman who chose to leave her child, not for any great ambition but just because she couldn’t, or didn’t know how to, live the life of mother and wife. Margaret’s choice to leave underpins her reaction to Patrick’s death and her attempt to mother Joe. If she felt she had the right to grieve her own son it’s unlikely that she would seek out a substitute. But while this is still an element of the film, what emerged finally is a complicated love story: the story of a woman who tries to love her son too late and the complex relationship she forms with a surrogate.