It's one thing to realize and another to realize it. You might be one step closer, but you still have to take that second step. Subtle and fine but there. The movie on the other hand is not subtle. Just look who's playing the mother (actor) and who's playing the son. You might not realize it straight away (yes there is that word again),but when you do it won't be a hidden message.

Having said that, the movie is entertaining, unless you have a fear/hate for that kind of thing. It is kind of operatic and while the signs are there, it takes more to go all the way. It's a road movie in the aspect that you go places (many different languages many different jokes about countries, mostly working). Yes there are clichés and as pointed out, the movie tells you upfront what it wants to do. You'll either like it or you won't

Directed by and starring the Comédie Francaise actor Guillaume Gallienne, ME, MYSELF AND MUM| offers the entertaining sight of one actor essaying the twin roles of Guillaume, the son; and his mother. She has had three children; two of them she regards as her sons, but Guillaume is the proverbial ugly duckling. This is chiefly due to his being uncertain about his sexuality - although born a boy, he thinks of himself either as a girl or a homosexual, he is not sure which.

The basic scenario leads to some comic complications, where Guillaume tries to behave like a girl but finds himself repudiated in a society that refuses to recognize the presence of gender difference. On occasions we are reminded of the classic sequence in Billy Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959),where Jack Lemmon, disguised as a woman, keeps repeating the phrase "I'm a girl, I'm a girl, I'm a girl" in a desperate attempt to convince himself that he should think like a woman.

But what precisely constitutes the difference between "male" and "female" behavior? This is what ME, MYSELF AND MUM sets out to explore through the ingenious use of doubling. The mother comes across as someone content to read books in bed, and walk out in public like a pea-hen, all feathers and flummery. Guillaume is so impressed with her self-assurance that it's hardly surprising he wants to emulate her. Yet it seems that Galienne (as director) sacrifices the courage of his convictions in search of a happy ending; having spent three-quarters of the film creating a highly successful comedy that exposes the cultural constructions underpinning our conceptions of gender, he opts to show how Guillaume is actually a full-blown heterosexual at heart. Once he finds the right girl, his "true" sexuality can emerge. Consequently the film appears nothing more than a rite-of-passage ritual, its tone highly reminiscent of Fifties Hollywood melodramas which showed "crazy mixed-up kids" learning the value of home and family life, despite their checkered pasts.

This is highly disappointing; because Gallienne (as an actor) is a highly talented individual, someone whose mannerisms are so brilliantly delineated in the playing of the two central roles that we understand how many so-called "democratic" societies try to create absolute distinctions between masculinity and femininity. Anything in between is regarded as deviant. We end up wishing that he had followed this argument through to the end, rather than tacking on a sentimental coda.

Winning 5 trophies of César Awards this year including BEST FILM (fending off tough competitors like STRANGER BY THE LAKE 2013, 8/10; THE PAST 2013, 8/10 and BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR 2013) and BEST ACTOR, for the director-debut of triple threat farceur Guillaume Gallienne (director, writer and leading actor),and more strikingly, he plays two opposite roles, Guillaume and his mother.

Treading off the beaten track, it is an ingenious counter-coming-out story of an effeminate boy Guillaume, who is assumed by his family to be gay because of his outlandish deportment, being lackadaisical in sports and the accurate mimicry of his mother's intonation, all the way he is trying to comply with her expectation, to love men like a girl. Guillaume learns how to dance like a girl, enrolls in different all-male boarding schools, observes girls' unique comportment, the way of how they utter, nurtures a crush on the handsome jock, dodges military service, arranges sorties to gay club, to experience sex, after all the stereotyped attempts to be a normal gay, he meets the love of his life, Amandine, a genuine girl.

The film opens as a live premiere of a monologue play by Guillaume, who farcically recounts his autobiographic anecdotes and intermittently mama pops up to conduct the make-believe conversations with him, everything is saturated with uplifting vivacity and hilarious skits, never too lewd or offensive, Götz Otto and Diane Kruger's cameos as a beefy masseur and an enema nurse are sidesplitting. Also the mockeries of professional psychiatrists are sterling bursting points. All in all, underscored by Wagner's magnificent Tannhauser Overture, Guillaume accomplishes his rite-of-passage by overcoming his fear of horse, and finally he understands who he is, and the last confession is to come out to be straight, feminine surely, but he is a heterosexual man who loves woman.

No melancholy, it is an out-and-out fine piece of French comedy, Guillaume is daring enough to take on both challenging characters, a young man half his age, and a middle-aged woman with a reserved caricature of frigidity and supremacy. He somehow pulls off both roles, with admirable talent of imitation to be wacky and sincere at the same time, it is not only a boy's path of knowing his true id, it is also an inconspicuous ode to a mother's profound attachment to her son, it may be overbearing, but the ethos of unconditional support is universally appealing.