“Do you have someone?” Frank (Geert Van Rampelberg) asks Mona (Laure Calamy) in “Mon Inseparable (My Everything),” with the answer not about to make much of a difference when they’re already sharing a bed together. Giving the cryptic reply “Not exactly,” the stranger she met at a bar finds out soon enough what she meant when he runs into her adult son Joel (Charles Peccia-Galletto) when the two both make a trip to the bathroom past midnight, an awkward encounter for anyone, but particularly so when Joel has a mental disability that manifests itself in an instantly defensive reaction before becoming a full-blown panic attack. It’s why you suspect Mona hasn’t brought someone home in a while, but after an evening where the round of caramel vodka she ordered for friends seemed like a necessity when it seems like one misery after another piles up in her life, capping things off with what looks like a one-night stand shouldn’t hurt.
In Anne-Sophie Bailly’s touching and well-crafted drama, this instinct isn’t necessarily the wrong one despite its messy outcome when Mona’s devotion to others appears to start hampering her ability to help them when she hasn’t taken much care of herself. Visiting her mother who is in her final days at the hospital, she is saddled with a reason to walk over to another floor when Joel and his girlfriend Oceane (Julie Froger), who met at a work program for those with special needs, have gotten pregnant, much to the initial dismay of her parents, though Mona can only feel ambivalence when it becomes just one of many concerns for the longtime single mother.
International audiences have seen Calamy play someone so overwhelmed before in Eric Gravel’s 2021 drama “Full Time.” (And if not, get on that – the tale of an overworked maid rushing around Paris trying to make ends meet is a stunner.) In “My Everything,” the act hasn’t grown tiresome even when the situation facing Mona wears on her. With eyes that often moisten around the edges, leaving uncertain whether she’s about to laugh or cry, Calamy is riveting to watch as Mona, who surreptitiously decides to drive Joel up to the North Sea after things get too intense at home and clearly has no exit plan, a trip made all the more fraught when Joel wanders out of her view in a department store.
“My Everything” could easily head towards mawkish territory with Mona having to decide how much agency her son should have with his condition, having clearly become capable of handling some adult responsibilities, but Bailly is conscious of where things could become overly sentimental. Rather than strictly focus on the story of an overbearing mother who learns to let go, the writer/director finds another gear in observing Mona start putting her own needs above others who rely on her for a change and when they aren’t the choices that’ll make her mother of the year, the results can provide as much relief to the audience as the character when they might not end up being right but they do feel real. In “My Everything,” nothing comes easy for Mona, but Bailly and Calamy make it all too easy to understand where she’s coming from.
“Mon Inseparable (My Everything)” will screen at the Venice Film Festival on August 31st at the Sala Darsena and September 1st at the PalaBiennale.