Mascotte Review – Review on FilmTotaal
Director: Remy van Heugten | Screenplay: Gustavo’s gaze | Cast: Liam Jeans (Jeremy), Maartje Remmers (Abbey), Frederike van Oordt (Emine), Geert van Rampelberg (Willem) and others | Time to play: 99 minutes | Year: 2023
In his film debut good luck to the oppressive relationship between a father and a son was central, in his latest film Remy Heugten focuses on an equally stifling and even stranger relationship between a mother and a son. In Mascot Teenage Jeremy loses himself completely in senseless violence, only to finally be seen by someone for once. A cry for attention, in an otherwise rather subdued film.
Jerry is a frustrated boy of our time. Therefore, he has had a lot to choose from (not perfect). He lives with his mother Abbey and his sister Emine, missing a father figure in his life. It soon becomes clear that Abbey has taken her children from her father and that Jerry was looked down on by his father when he was little. Jerry has begun to assume the role of father in the family.
Just as Jerry is missing an example, Abbey is missing a partner in her life. She uses her son in an unhealthy way to fill this lack. In rather unfortunate moments, Jerry discovers that his mother seeks the attention of other men after all. Feeling clearly rejected, Jerry ends up in an even more destructive cycle.
In his film, Van Heugten shows what he does to children when they are abandoned by their own parents. Jerry seeks validation in illegal fights and other violent expressions on his way to adulthood. It’s a cry for attention and confirmation, something he shouldn’t expect from his parents. Her sister Emine, against her better judgement, keeps looking for her father and likes to hide in her homemade fleece suits, precisely so as not to be seen.
Mascot it’s the opposite of a coming-of-age story. Instead of Jerry being in his prime and discovering himself, he’s just destroying himself and everything he has. Violence should make you feel stronger, but each time it ends in a new disappointment. Plus all the other disappointments he finds in his way. The sad downward spiral is depicted step by step.
And all this in front of a typical Dutch decoration. Young people who are in danger of going off the rails because they don’t get the attention they deserve in their family: it just happens in our own backyard. Who will help these young people, especially if they unintentionally scare everyone? A very essential question that Heugten asks at a time when youth care in the Netherlands is not working too well and many young people have nowhere to go with their problems. The consequences are presented in vain.
How high is the social relevance of Mascot However, the dialogues leave something to be desired. Maybe it was intentional, but the conversations Abbey and Jerry have sometimes make the mother-son relationship even weirder and more unhealthy than it already was. Do they really talk to each other because they live in their own world or this really should have been improved? It creates a certain implausibility, which is a shame for a movie that proclaims an important message.