Brazilian filmmaker Anna Muylaert’s Don’t Call Me Son mashes together several familiar themes, including the reunion of a lost child and his parents, a coming-of-age drama, and LGBT self-identity struggles. Pierre, an androgynous teen with bisexual tastes and a penchant for eyeliner, is quite happy with his life until he learns that his mother, a low-income single woman, actually kidnapped him from his biological parents when he was an infant. Pierre’s real parents, who have been searching for him for the last 17 years, are initially thrilled to have found their long-lost child. But this family is a straight-laced bourgeois clan and Pierre’s preference for zebra print miniskirts clashes with their sensibilities. Even worse for Pierre, his biological father turns out to be a drunken bully while his mother is an emotionally unstable woman who enables her spouse’s crass behavior. There are subplots involving Pierre’s siblings--a younger sister who was also kidnapped in infancy by the false mother, and a younger brother in his new home--but neither of those are well sketched out. The charismatic Naomi Nero offers a memorable turn as the idiosyncratic Pierre, but the story feels clichéd. Optional. (P. Hall)
Don’t Call Me Son
Kino Lorber, 82 min., in Portuguese w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $29.99 Volume 33, Issue 3
Don’t Call Me Son
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