Shattering Tropes: Difficult Mothers And Defiant Daughters Onscreen

• There is something strangely endearing about stories of mothers and daughters wrought with disaffection.

• The mothers in the films discussed in this article are complex figures who resist disappearing into a role that is often imagined through a blinkered vision of womanhood.

• Across these films, the 'difficult' mothers often raise two kinds of daughters: one defiant, one tragically obedient who will do anything to win her mother’s approval.

Contrary to the self-effacing ‘mother-who-pours-and-decays’ trope that dominates cinema and popular culture, there is something strangely endearing about stories of mothers and daughters wrought with disaffection, set on a collision course. Such stories often echo a long-articulated feminist understanding: that motherhood is a role, not an identity. And that it is only one among many roles a woman takes on in her life. If a woman appears imperfect within it, she cannot be reduced to that imperfection or judged solely through its lens.

We often evoke mothers to describe other forms of nurturing: Mother Nature, Mother Nation, even rivers are mothers. Amid this abundance of motherhood as a symbol, my favourite kind of mothers are those who are not reduced to metaphors of forbearance. Instead, they remain singular, complex figures who resist disappearing into a role that is often imagined through a blinkered vision of womanhood.

In films such as Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978), Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017), Unishe April (Rituparno Ghosh, 1994), Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021), Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022), Qala (Anvita Dutt, 2022) and White Oleander (Peter Kosminsky, 2002), one encounters mothers who share something palpably complex with their daughters, where their personalities shape—and often scar—the daughters through a love that is difficult, belated and impossible to outgrow.

Hostile Love or Loving Hostility?
In Autumn Sonata, Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman), a celebrated pianist, visits the home of her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann) in Sweden. Still yearning for her mother’s approval, Eva plays Chopin’s Prelude no. 2 for her on the piano and anxiously asks for her opinion. Charlotte responds, “not bad”. Eva understands that “not bad” is not the same as good.

In Lady Bird, Christine (Saoirse Ronan) asks her mother (Laurie Metcalf) whether she likes her. Standing outside a trial room, her mother responds that she simply wants Christine to become the best version of herself. Christine replies: “What if this is the best version?”

So much is lost in exchanges like these between who one is and who one is expected to become, as mothers and daughters begin to position themselves as opponents. These films understand that loving someone does not necessarily translate into liking them. Yet, love persists, often resentfully, in spaces where approval doesn’t come through.

These mothers, too, are bewildered by motherhood. In Autumn Sonata, Charlotte eventually tells Eva that she never truly wanted to be her mother. She was as helpless in the role as Eva was in receiving it. Similarly, in Unishe April, Sarojini Gupta, the celebrated dancer (Aparna Sen), confesses to her daughter Mishtu (Debashree Roy) that she should never have married.

Often, when mothers step down from the pedestal motherhood assigns them, an understanding rooted in shared womanhood emerges.

In Defense of Defiant Daughters

Accommodating a mother’s shortcomings does not negate a daughter’s trauma, for it is never the responsibility of the child to pre-empt the complexities of adult lives or extend empathy in advance. There is no denying the daughter’s wounds, just as there is no refuting a woman’s right to become the kind of mother she is capable of being.

Across these films, the 'difficult' mothers often raise two kinds of daughters: one defiant, like Lady Bird, who would rather jump from a moving car to avoid being lectured by her mother and writes “fuck you, Mom” on the pink cast she ends up with as a result. The other is like Qala (Tripti Dimri), almost tragically obedient, willing to do anything to earn her mother’s approval. There is, however, a third kind, like Astrid (Alison Lohman) in White Oleander, or Eva in Autumn Sonata, who navigate between these positions. Astrid grows up idealising her mother (Michelle Pfeiffer), until she begins to recognise how her mother’s affection is entangled with control and manipulation.

The daughters who grow up wounded often carry a courtroom in their head, where she becomes judge, jury and solicitor as she places her mother in the witness box.

The Confrontation

My favourite moments in these films are those in which daughters confront their mothers, hemming them in from all directions. It is almost like an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force—like two positions taken in a swordfight where neither is willing to yield. The true counterpart to the mother, in moments of hostility, is the adult daughter who returns with memories of everything withheld and says, “I remember.” Following such confrontations, Astrid and Joy in Everything Everywhere All at Once, though for very different reasons, arrive at the same demand from their mothers: to be let go.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is premised on this tension, where reconciliation between a mother (Michelle Yeoh) and a daughter(Stephanie Hsu) becomes the only force capable of preventing the destruction of a sprawling multiverse. The mother must conjure hope for her daughter who believes that nothing matters beyond her grief.

In most of these films, the mothers eventually let their daughters go, relinquishing the authority they once assumed motherhood entitled them to.

The Tenderness of Reconciliation

Among the films I’ve discussed here, Petite Maman offers perhaps the most tender articulation of mutual understanding between a mother and daughter. Though it may seem like an unlikely lens through which to approach reconciliation, the film gradually reveals why such understanding becomes possible only when motherhood is momentarily suspended.

The story follows Marion (Nina Meurisse) who, after the death of her mother, returns to her maternal home with her daughter, Nelly (Josephine Sanz). Overwhelmed by loss, she abruptly leaves for the city, leaving the child behind with her husband. Grappling with her own insecurities and confusions, Nelly begins exploring the woods surrounding the house and encounters a young girl who turns out to be the childhood version of her mother. She befriends her, spends time with her grandmother, and searches for answers she does not yet possess. Whether Nelly imagined the younger version of her mother is ultimately beside the point; it does not diminish the profound earnestness of the encounter.

Since Nelly does not yet have access to the emotional world of adults, the little mother she meets offers her a language through which to understand grief. She tells Nelly, “You did not invent my sadness.”

For distant mothers and their difficult daughters, reparation arrives in unanticipated ways, even though completely understanding each other (for any two people, really) is a fantasy. Meaning well does not translate into doing well. Or being well. The crude gap in age and experience turns empathy into an impossible chase—a tragedy written in the stars. Perhaps there is no easy answer to Eva’s question, “Don’t we ever stop being a mother and daughter?” Perhaps one can fleetingly become something else when one takes away the burden of motherhood from mothers who also get tired of reckoning with what the role entails.

(Sritama Bhattacharyya is a writer, critic and educator whose essays examine gender, culture and power)