Me, Myself and Mum

The hit French comedy ‘Me, Myself and Mum’ retells actor-director Guillaume Gallienne’s upbringing in a family that wrongly interprets his theatricality and mummy-worship as signs of homosexuality, sending the boy into an almighty identity crisis. The film satirically makes its point about the dangers of gender stereotyping, but it delivers this message about as ungracefully and unamusingly as imaginable.

Every social group is reduced to the crudest cliché. When Gallienne falls in love with a woman, it’s because she’s hot. When he visits England, he encounters a coterie of Lewis Carroll-esque eccentrics. More darkly, the only actually gay characters in the film – who are also the only Arabs – are portrayed as violent, debauched machos. At such a sensitive time for gay rights in France, there’s a call for movies that treat this subject with nuanced understanding. ‘Blue Is the Warmest Colour’ did this with a bang (and lots of banging). Gallienne’s film does not.