5 Movies About F*cked Up Mother/Daughter Relationships

“Imitation of Life” (1959)
Not enough handkerchiefs in the universe for this one—Douglas Sirk’s unbelievably manipulative and luscious “issues movie” is an extraordinary example of a film that so completely defines its genre (the “women’s picture”) that it practically transcends it. Of course Sirk has been thoroughly and rightly reclaimed in recent years as an absolute master of the form, (our Sirk Essentials can be found here) imbuing syrupy melodrama with honest depth of feeling, and clothing it all in such dazzling, skilful technicolor photography that his films become so much more than the maudlin, chocolate box confections they were initially dismissed as. And “Imitation of Life,” the director’s last Hollywood picture, is certainly one of his masterpieces, and fits our purposes here entirely, dealing with not one but two mother/daughter relationships as central themes, but using them to highlight gender and race issues in a remarkably fearless and, certainly at the time, provocative manner.

Struggling actress Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) meets homeless, penniless Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore) on the beach one day when their daughters, Susie and Sarah Jane run off to play together. Although times are tough all round, an immediate bond springs up between the women, across racial lines (in fact an alternate read on the film is almost as a love story between these two), and Lora offers mother and daughter a place to stay for the night. It’s an arrangement which becomes long-term, with Annie eventually (voluntarily) settling into a kind of housekeeper role, while Lora pursues her career. Sirk, however shifted the focus of the 1934 Claudette Colbert-starring film of the same name, more onto the daughters, and so we get to know Susie, the sweet, blonde daughter of Lora’s who’s chief gripe with her mother is the benign neglect she suffers as the ambitious Lora becomes more in demand. And Sarah Jane, a complicated, often resentful young girl whose light skin allows her to pass for white (which she desperately identifies with), but only at the cost of rejecting and repudiating her deeply loving mother Annie. The filial relationships become more central as the film goes on, and its second half is largely devoted to their maternal issues: Susie inevitably falls in love with her mother’s boyfriend (the extraordinarily handsome John Gavin) while Sarah Jane becomes wilder and eventually runs away to be a burlesque dancer, changing her name and denying all ties to her heartbroken, saintly mother.

The sanctification of Annie as the film’s central black character is of course problematic, but the hatefulness of Sarah Jane’s treatment of her, which of course reflects her own self-hatred and societally mandated shame at her black heritage, is an incredibly weighty topic to deal with so overtly. But Sirk doesn’t stop there, also knitting in an edge of class commentary and a sympathetic portrayal of Lora’s independence and ambition (for which she would surely be punished in another film). It’s a heady, affecting and lavishly laid-out buffet (Turner’s costume budget, for example was the highest ever for a picture to that date) topped off by an extraordinary Mahalia Jackson gospel performance which you will, we guarantee, be watching through tears.

“Thirteen” (2003)
While we’re definitely out of step with the near-universal praise and acclaim that was heaped upon Catherine Hardwicke’s directorial debut, there’s no denying that it’s a film that at its heart is about a messed up mother/daughter relationship. Chronicling the rapid devolution of it central character, the unbearably self-involved 13-year-old Tracy from happy, healthy tween to Whip-It-huffing, promiscuous, self-harming wild child, the film’s unquestioning allegiance to the validity of her point of view is, for our money, its main shortcoming: Hardwicke plays it out with all the music-video shallowness and woozy histrionics that a self-indulgent teen might indeed display, which is no doubt part of the point, but it does yield a film that, like its central protagonist, we just spend the entire running time wanting to slap. However, it does have one interesting facet in the relationship between Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) and her mother Melanie (Holly Hunter), and the way in which Tracy’s turbulent coming-of-age in fact marks the figurative coming of age for her mother too. What’s key here is the characterization of Melanie: a young mother, and a financially insecure recovering alcoholic with bohemian leanings who has relationship with Tracy that seems more like a friendship than mother-and-daughter. And so some of Melanie’s initial inaction in the face of Tracy’s changed behavior can be chalked up to this free-spirit tendency, however what actually happens is that the light-switch change in Tracy will reveal Melanie to be less youthful than immature, and frighteningly ill-equipped to curb her daughter’s sudden excesses.

Tracy is a good girl, on the cusp of “that difficult period” who suddenly notices the different (ie more provocative) way the popular girls at school dress and talk and act. Forcing her mom to buy her some tight jeans and a “cute” shirt, Tracy pursues a friendship with queen bee Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed, credited as co-writer here, on whose experiences the film is reportedly loosely based) which sees Tracy transform into a cigarette-smoking, purse-stealing, scowling bad girl and beyond. A cycle of drug and sex one-upmanship begins between Tracy and Evie, in that peculiarly competitive way of teenage best friends, just as Melanie reestablishes a romantic relationship with an ex-junkie (Jeremy Sisto). Eventually the volatile nature of the relationship between the girls begins to tell on them both though, and Tracy’s escalating criminality, failing grades and self-destructive tendencies force a cathartic but emotionally devastating confrontation with Melanie. Leaving aside our issues with the film (and they are myriad, in case you hadn’t noticed), at the very least it can be lauded for trying to portray that often traumatic period in a girl’s life when she shifts gear from childhood to adulthood, and when, paradoxically, she may start to reject her mother at exactly the point she needs her most. “Thirteen” does a decent job of inhabiting the mind of a troubled teenage girl, but whether that’s a place you want to spend any time is another question.