It was television, specifically HBO’s The Sopranos (1999-2007), that finally gave the devouring mother her three-dimensional due. Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand) is a masterpiece of passive-aggressive malevolence. She weaponizes guilt, forgetfulness, and illness to control her mob-boss son, Tony. When Tony tries to explain his feelings of dread and panic to his therapist, Dr. Melfi, he traces it all back to Livia. “She’s like a black hole,” he says. “You get too close, you get sucked in.” The show’s genius is to make Tony sympathetic and monstrous, a product of a mother who could never say, “I’m proud of you,” only, “I gave my life to my children on a silver platter.” Livia’s greatest act is to put a hit out on her own son—the ultimate betrayal of maternal duty. In Livia, the Oedipal curse becomes a lived, banal, and devastating family drama.

: The mother maintained her innocence from the start, alleging that her husband filed the case as retaliation for her seeking custody of their four children and alimony.

In Call Me By Your Name (2017), the mother (Amira Casar) occupies a quiet, knowing space. When Elio returns heartbroken after Oliver’s departure, she does not scold or smother. She picks him up from the station, drives him home, and simply sits with him. It is a portrait of maternal non-intervention, of allowing the son his pain.