[7]

Mommie Dearest is something else. I can’t tell if it’s trying to be an earnest expose on the turbulent home life of legendary star Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter, Christina, or if the dark comedy and camp value were intentional. The film is based on Christina’s tell-all book, so we really only get the nastiest parts of the story — how Joan locked her daughter in the pool house, beat her with wire hangers, threw away her toys, sent her away to Catholic school, and generally just treated her like shit. If you can let go of your disbelief and embrace the over-the-top (and possibly true?) nature of this mother/daughter relationship, Mommie Dearest is pretty entertaining — kinda like watching a car wreck.

Faye Dunaway, who brings Crawford to full-blown, manic, paranoid, power-hungry life has disavowed the film, so maybe that should give us a clue about how to interpret it. Is it a good performance? Hard to say. If Crawford really was an unrelenting monster, then it’s a terrific performance. If she was more human than Mommie Dearest let’s us see, then it’s certainly over-the-top. The truth is surely somewhere in between. Diana Scarwid plays Christina as a young adult and Mara Hobel plays her as a younger child — both do well screaming, crying, and being terrified of Dunaway’s Crawford. Toward the end, Scarwid does particularly well as mother and daughter come as close as they ever would to reconciling.

Camp highlights include Dunaway’s ravaging of the rose garden after she’s dumpeded by MGM. In this gem of a moment you see Dunaway hacking at roses with hedge shears, screaming for young Christina to bring her the ax. When Christina does, we’re then privileged with the sight of Dunaway hacking down a little tree and then sinking into a pile of sublime overacting. The most memorable scene of the film, however, comes later — when Crawford notices wire hangers in her little daughter’s closet. Dunaway is at her most monstrous in this scene, her face painted in cold cream, waving wire hangers and screaming at the top of her lungs at a child begging for mercy. It’s hilarious. It’s horrifying. It may or may not have been on purpose. It’s Mommie Dearest.