Mama

Mama is about a woman librarian's struggle to bring up her son without the help from her absent husband or the state. A childhood accident has left the boy retarded, no school wants to tak:e him, and his mother can neither bring him to work nor leave him at home. She eventually contemplates abandoning him or giving him an overdose of sleeping pills... This resolutely unsentimental fiction is interspersed with documentary sequences exploring related issues; the mix gives the film a trenchant modernity rare in Mainland Chinese cinema. (Tony Rayns)