Dear Old Mom? Hardly

I’m sorry Mama, I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you cry but tonight I’m cleaning out my closet.

--Eminem

As the young hero (Kieran Culkin) of “Igby Goes Down” is--how to put this delicately?--beating on his mother’s (Susan Sarandon) corpse, he finally feels a moment of remorse: “Why is it the first time I feel remotely affectionate toward her is when she’s dead?”

Likewise, when the young heroine (Alison Lohman) of “White Oleander” finally emerges from the oppressive shadow of her mother (Michelle Pfeiffer), her emotions are mixed: “No matter how much she damaged me, I know my mother loves me.”

Mothers. We hate them, we love them, we need them, we hate that we need them. And for those of us who become them, we hopefully grow to better understand our own. The movies have certainly given us their share of memorable moms from Joan Crawford’s Mildred Pierce (rhymes with fierce) to Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford, who became infamous for inappropriate use of a clothes hanger.

Susan Sarandon, who plays mothers in three fall films, points out that when she played one in “Pretty Baby” 24 years ago, “it was considered sort of a kiss of death to your career. Apparently your sensuality was supposed to dwindle.”

Several actresses have won Oscars playing mothers with kids in tow while eking out a living, serving tables, forming the union, fighting the corporations. Think Ellen Burstyn in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” Helen Hunt in “As Good as It Gets,” Shirley MacLaine in “Terms of Endearment,” Sissy Spacek in “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” Sally Field in “Norma Rae,” Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich,” Halle Berry in “Monster’s Ball.”

Even the absence of mothers in movies is worth mentioning. If little girls have grown up believing they didn’t need one, remember that Snow White, Ariel, Cinderella, Belle and Pocahontas either had no mothers or had the evil step variety. OK, Bambi had one but they shot her.

Up to now, 2002 movie moms have been generally sympathetic although hardly complicated. Diane Lane was a devoted mom whose real interests lay elsewhere in “Unfaithful.” Jodie Foster went buff and tough to protect her daughter in “Panic Room.” We’ve had the loving, wise moms overseeing monsoon and big fat Greek weddings. “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” offered mushy tears of reconciliation between a mother and her daughter. Hugh Grant did better mothering than Toni Collette’s suicidal mess in “About a Boy,” but you still had to love her. So far this year, only those vain and self-absorbed moms in “Lovely & Amazing” have dared venture into dark places.

But there are plenty others coming, and mothers may not choose to recognize themselves. We are talking selfish. (“Why would my son do this to me?” Candice Bergen asks of her newly engaged son in “Sweet Home Alabama.” “Did you ever for a second think how this reflects on me?” demands Susan Sarandon of her son’s poor school performance in “Igby.”) Overprotective, overbearing, often cruel. (“You are fat and ugly,” says the mother of America Ferrera in “Real Women Have Curves.”) Desperate. (Just watch Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz drink and pill-pop themselves under the table in “Rules of Attraction.”)

Of “8 Mile,” need we say more than that the November drama stars Eminem with Kim Basinger as his mother? (“This is not his biography,” a studio publicist insists, “and let us say Kim’s character is simply flawed.”)

These mothers are portrayals that may, as Sarandon says, “exaggerate how most of us are in real life,” but at least they attempt to create fully formed portraits of human nature.

Maybe we should applaud the fact that movie moms are getting closer to the bone. In “White Oleander,” it is Pfeiffer’s tough love, not her beauty, that makes the skin crawl. As Ingrid, a mother who spends most of the film behind bars, she still manages to nearly destroy any semblance of happiness her daughter may find. Her creator insists, however, that she is not all bad. There is both a pivotal moment of selflessness and a stubbornly admirable strength.

“The best mothers look at their children without expectations,” says Janet Fitch, author of the novel “White Oleander.” “Ingrid, in my story, is a shaper, which is more traditionally the father’s role. It’s about mother as the central core, and Astrid, her daughter, ultimately can survive because she has that image of her mother’s strength inside her.”

Her story bears similarities to “Real Women Have Curves,” which also deals with a suffocating, rigid mother and the daughter who has to finally break free to find herself. “The mother’s logic is based on her own cultural experience,” explains Lupe Ontiveros, who plays the mother. “And even though her daughter finally must go far away, we see they are very much alike. She has her mother’s strength but with an academic orientation.”

Both “White Oleander” and “Real Women Have Curves” began as comic pieces, the former as a short story with the mother as the protagonist. “It was a black comedy,” Fitch says, “but my friends said the mother was a monster. So I gave her a daughter and then it wasn’t funny anymore.” Lupe Ontiveros had performed “Real Women” on stage as a comedy. When she first read the screenplay, now a drama, she found the mother frightening. “I finally came to realize that maybe this was the true mother under all that comedy,” she says.

Using humor to offset mom as monster is, of course, one way of making her less so. “Real Women’s” director, Patricia Cardoso, says testing showed that audiences found the mother character “too mean, too mean. We found just by going back and using the same lines but different takes of certain scenes made the difference. We also moved up a few scenes where she shows some humor, like when she thinks she’s pregnant but finds it is something called menopause. Now I think audiences will find her tough and manipulating, but maybe understand that here is a woman who has worked since she was 12 and in her own way loves her daughter.”

“Blue Car,” a film well-received at Sundance and scheduled for November release, is, like “Igby,” “White Oleander” and “Real Women,” a coming-of-age tale that features another mom from hell, portrayed by Margaret Colin. Colin was worried the character could be a “one-note monster” but she and writer-director Karen Moncreiff worked to soften some of the edge.

“On the surface, she’s so unsympathetic,” Moncreiff concedes, “but Margaret gave nuance to Diane’s struggle, adding layers of humor and humanity. Like a scene when her younger daughter starts asking about the birds and the bees. Margaret gives us an expression like ‘not this one too,’ which is very funny. I’m hoping audiences will see her as an open wound, but because she lets down her younger daughter, they still can’t forgive her.”

“Igby Goes Down,” “The Banger Sisters,” “Sweet Home Alabama” and “8 Women” (which features a who’s who of French stars, including Catherine Deneuve as a wealthy mother with two daughters and a closetful of skeletons) are out-and-out comedies that cloak their far-less-than-ideal mothers in humor.

Igby’s mom (played by Sarandon, who also stars with Dustin Hoffman in “Moonlight Mile” and as Goldie Hawn’s “Banger Sister”) is scathingly portrayed, although the film’s writer-director, Burr Steers, says it is possible to find some humanity in there.

“The only way not to see her as a monster is to see it from her point of view,” he says. “She sees herself as the victim, everything has been perpetrated on her, including this son. [“His creation was an act of animosity, why shouldn’t his life be one?” she says pointedly.] But still, as everything is falling apart around her, she has kept the family somewhat together.”

Crucially, Sarandon points out of the sons, “obviously they’ve inherited some of her humor and irony.”

Sarandon’s mother in “The Banger Sisters”--played opposite Hawn’s single sexpot--is less loathsome but comes to realize that she has lost her inner groupie and is drowning in blandness. (“I’m the color of the Department of Motor Vehicles!”) Her teenage daughters, the younger of whom is played by her real daughter Eva Amurri, make fun of her anal retentiveness (“She danced? With her perfect purse?”) but come to appreciate her.

“I see it as a comedy but not a broad comedy,” writer-director Bob Dolman says. “Susan’s transition is the biggest one in the movie, and I take that seriously.”

Dolman began the story about 10 years ago, thinking he’d write about two young groupies and rock ‘n’ roll.

“During that time, I had kids of my own and my characters kept changing, and the truth was, they became more interesting as they got older,” he says. “What makes the mother character interesting ... even while she’s funny, is that like many parents with reckless pasts, they’re scared their children will follow in their paths. What she learns is that it’s better to be open and honest with kids as they get old enough to understand.”

“Moonlight Mile” writer-director Brad Silberling says that as the mother whose daughter was gunned down as a bystander in a domestic dispute, Sarandon is a “searing beacon of truth. Despite the loss of her own daughter, she’s the one who helps those around her survive.”

Sarandon, who also played mothers in “Stepmom” and “Anywhere but Here,” notes that “I’m now being told that I’ve done too many.” She plays no favorites among her September troika. “Like children, I love each one differently,” she says. “I hope there’s a part of me in each one. I can relate to their mistakes and frailties, their denial.”

The theme of mothers heading off kids lest they repeat their own mistakes is echoed in the romantic comedy “Sweet Home Alabama,” which features Reese Witherspoon and a trio of moms: Candice Bergen as the mother of her fiancee, Jean Smart as her soon-to-be ex-husband’s, and Mary Kay Place as Witherspoon’s. Bergen’s politician is played mostly for laughs (“It seems the voters like being reminded that I’m a mother”). Smart says hers is “the mom who knows how things are going to turn out without stepping on her kids.” Place is the one who sent her daughter off too fast just to give her a shot at more than she ever had.

The film’s director points out that any story about relationships should include those who had the most impact on the main characters.

“We decided the key to this romantic triangle was the mothers,” Andy Tennant says. “For them to be ignored would be to miss out on what choices were made and why.” Even though one of the guys doesn’t get the girl, it may be just as big a triumph that he gets out from under his mother’s grasp.

Obviously, having popular actresses like Place, Sarandon or Pfeiffer portray what could be perceived as unappealing characters is, as director Burr Steers says, “key, key, key.” Spacek may have plotted the murder of her son’s killer in her bedroom last year, but, heck, she’s earned her mom stripes many times over. The actresses say they yearn for the colors such roles can offer.

“You’re not working to please the audience,” says Ontiveros, “you’re working to give the character life, soul and rhythms. We can’t always be the likable characters, but we can be real.” She describes her character as diametrically opposed to her own experience--and therein lies the challenge. Use what you are, but then some.

“I think you can’t deny what you’re using as an actress and a real parent,” says Amy Irving, who plays one of two mothers (Spacek is the other) in “Tuck Everlasting.” “In this film, my challenge was not to be the kind of mother I am.” While Spacek is the immortal earth mother of the popular book, Irving’s Mother Foster (created for the film) is yet another mom that’s hard to love.

“She is a woman not forthright with her affections and so rigid in her beliefs,” says Irving, who last played the mother of a teenage drug addict in “Traffic.” “But the beauty of her is that she changes and learns and there is an arc. I’d have been less interested if she’d never gotten it.”

The film’s director says he hopes the audience will come around to respect, if not embrace, Irving’s character. “When her daughter catches a glimpse of Amy taking care of her dying mother,” explains Jay Russell, “she realizes her mother isn’t a complete cold fish. But let’s face it, it’s Sissy’s character who you love because she’s everyone’s mother--or at least the warm side of everyone’s mother.”

What most of the new films share is the need to break free of mothers, be they dysfunctional, dominating or even well-meaning. They are about children learning to live on their own, even as they are pulled the other way. (“You don’t go anywhere until I let you go,” Mom declares to son in “Igby Goes Down.”)

“In the end, our mother doesn’t grow so the daughter is the one that has to grow,” says “Real Women” director Cardoso. In “Blue Car,” the young protagonist “learns your parents just can’t always parent you,” says director Moncreiff. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad mothers but the truth is, very few of us can be perfect ones. “From a child’s point of view, any mother who isn’t there 100% is a bad mother,” observes Fitch.

No doubt movie mothers will continue to be great fodder, and if they’re taking a bit of a cinematic beating this fall, at least there are real issues being dealt with.

“Let’s face it, it is the most primal relationship,” says Steers.

And actresses, especially moms in real life, seek to play them. “When my 12-year-old son saw ‘Tuck Everlasting,’ he was so moved, he sat down and wrote his first poem,” says Irving. “That was really cool because as a mother, I live to impress my children.”

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The Mother ‘Hood

None of the upcoming movie moms are entirely unlovable (listed in order of release date); a few may even inspire envy.

*--* Title Actress Character Igby Goes Down Susan Sarandon Acidic, ironic The Banger Sisters Sarandon, again Uptight 8 Women Catherine Deneuve Seductively secretive Moonlight Mile Sarandon, again Wryly stoic Sweet Home Alabama Candice Bergen Calculatingly political Mary Kay Place Obsequious Jean Smart Warm, wise The Rules of Attraction Faye Dunaway Highly authoritarian Swoosie Kurtz Oblivious Tuck Everlasting Amy Irving Hardhearted Sissy Spacek Earth-motherly White Oleander Michelle Pfeiffer Single-minded Real Women Have Curves Lupe Ontiveros Rigid, blunt The Rising Place Laurel Holloman Determined Blue Car Margaret Colin Bitter 8 Mile Kim Basinger Damaged

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Michele Willens is an occasional contributor to Calendar.