My Mother is a Cow: A Daughter’s Loneliness
by Aayushi A.
The thesis of Moara Passoni’s My Mother Is a Cow (2024) lies in its title. When the protagonist, Mia (Luísa Bastos), has to leave her mother to stay at her aunt’s farm in the Brazilian wetlands, she develops an attachment to one of the cows, her feelings much like those about her mother.
Clocking in at less than 15 minutes, this short effectively manages to portray a girl’s pure longing for her mother and her desire for belonging. Mia’s loneliness is almost palpable. Away from her mother, the young girl is lost, not given the attention and care she needs. More often than not, she’s alone—in the house, in the field, by the river. She whispers to herself as she counts twig pieces—”She’s safe. She’s not. She’s safe. She’s not.”
There’s a scene in which Mia is watching the cow as its calf nurses from it. It’s clear that she sees them as her and her mother. Just like this, from a distance, she finds her mother in this cow. In the same way that the cow is in danger of the wild jaguar, so is her mother in danger of an unseen force. The way she imprints onto the cow is subtle, and feels well done. Bastos does a great job of portraying Mia—her silences are loud. There’s a natural feeling to the way her longing happens to manifest in the way it does. When she doesn’t find comfort in the people she’s with, it only makes sense that she looks to the abundant natural world around her.
Though there is an intentionality in the vagueness surrounding the reason why Mia’s mother sends her to the farm in the first place, and the larger sociopolitical factors at play in this story, I personally think the film could benefit by offering some more context. It sometimes felt like I was missing some vital information—which, granted, is probably in line with Mia’s own understanding of the situation. I was not the biggest fan of this choice but I can understand why it was done.
In a director’s statement, Passoni calls this film her “LatinX Western,” where the wetlands symbolize the unknown, and the journey is about confronting death and the first stirrings of desire. The strengths of My Mother Is a Cow lie in its quiet emotionality, compounded by the understated visuals of the wetlands. Within the story of the farm and the cow and the jaguar, it is simply about a girl who’s growing up and wants her mother and wants to protect her.