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Melissa-Mom and Me
Limor Pinhasov (Israel, International Spectrum)
Wednesday, May 4, 5:30 p.m.
The ROM Theatre (100 Queen’s Park)
Friday, May 6, 10:30 a.m.
The ROM Theatre (100 Queen’s Park)
Melissa-Mom and Me documents the friendship of two women who reunite years after working together at a Tokyo strip club. Yael, an Israeli photographer, sets out to find Melissa, who lives in North Carolina and is just getting her life together after a long stretch as a drug addict, stripper, and absentee parent.
The film’s name comes from the way Melissa’s abandoned teenage son has listed her in his cellphone directory—“Melissa-Mom”—and symbolizes the general sappiness of this film. It’s very much a personal story, and one that can be hard to empathize with at times for its lack of putting issues of sex work, drug addiction, and sexual abuse into a broader context.
The best parts of the film are videos Yael shot while the two were in Tokyo, strikingly honest portraits of the two friends at one of the most vulnerable times in their lives, fighting the isolation of working on the margins of a society they are not part of. Unfortunately, they aren’t enough to redeem the rest of the film.