Mother (1973)
"Little Mother" (original title)

Woman rises from being an out-of-work actress to the wife of a powerful South American dictator.

Director:

Radley Metzger

Writer:

Brian Phelan

Stars:

Siegfried Rauch, Christiane Krüger, Ivan Desny

Cast

Credited cast:
Siegfried Rauch	...	Colonel Pinares
Christiane Krüger	...	Marina Pinares
Ivan Desny	...	Colonel Umberia
Mark Damon	...	Riano
Anton Diffring	...	The Cardinal
Elga Sorbas	...	Annette
Vida Jerman
Branko Spoljar
Andrea Saric
Ignac Pavkovic
Ivica Pajer
Marina Nemet
Hermina Pipinic
Slobodan Dimitrijevic
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Relja Basic

Storyline

Marina Pinares, the wife of the president of a South American country, insists on being his vice-presidential running mate in the next election. She's no stranger to assassination to get what she wants, so some suspect she'll kill her own husband after the election to become president. In a series of flashbacks we see her rise to power: a party girl willing to sacrifice a friend's virtue to gain favor; the lover of a soldier she later tortures; the mistress of the military man she soon marries. The cult of the "Little Mother" has swept the country. She's always scheming. Even when she learns she has a fatal disease, she calculates how to leave a legacy in death.

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Plot Keywords:

death | flashback | mistress | soldier | torture | 

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Taglines:

Born on the Wrong Side of the Track... At the age of 23 she ruled seven million people!

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

West Germany USA Yugoslavia

Language:

English

Release Date:

25 February 1990 (West Germany)

Also Known As:

Mother

Filming Locations:

Zagreb, Croatia

Company Credits

Production Co:

Audubon Films, Jadran Film, Peter Carsten Produktion

Technical Specs

Runtime:

90 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Did You Know?

Connections

Version of Evita Peron (1981)

User Reviews

Political Exploitation Movie

This curious little film is clearly based on the life story of Evita Peron, despite renaming the characters and despite making the usual disclaimer that the story is entirely fictious. The film is a strange hybrid between political drama and exploitation film; Metzger even prepped up a sex scene with a couple of close-to-hardcore inserts with body doubles.

The most striking characteristic of the film is perhaps the hypocrisy of the Marina Pinares character, playing publicly a squeaky clean do-gooder while she is privately prepared to use sex and murder to get to and stay at the top. Christiane Krüger remarkably manages to make this appear believable. I find it hard to think about any other actress who would have been suitable for the role.