Vipère au poing (2004)

In 1922, after the death of their paternal grandmother, who had taken care of their upbringing, young Jean Rezeau and his older brother Ferdinand are reunited with their parents, who have returned from Indochina. But their relationship with their mother is about to take a nightmarish turn. They soon nickname her “Folcoche” (a combination of “madwoman” and “pig”), and she does not hesitate to feed them poorly or stick her fork into one of their hands. She treats them with sadism, force, and authority, while favoring her third son, Marcel, who was born in Indochina. She even goes so far as to try to have her second son falsely accused of stealing francs so she can send him to a reform school. Her odious behavior is explained and justified near the end of the film, when she returns to die at Jean’s home, after he has understood that this woman was terribly marked by her upbringing at the hands of her own parents.