by Tim Gordon
Mariska Hargitay makes her directorial debut with this deeply personal and surprisingly raw look at the life — and the myth — of her mother, Jayne Mansfield.
Hargitay was just three years old when Mansfield died in that tragic car accident, leaving behind an image that the world thought it knew: the blonde bombshell, the “sex kitten,” the tabloid punchline. But My Mom Jayne, isn’t content to leave her there. This is a daughter’s search for the woman behind all the headlines, and a chance to reclaim a story that has too often been told by everyone but her family.
The film opens with Hargitay revisiting what’s left of her childhood home, or more accurately, what used to be her parents’ dream house, now long gone. From there, she sets off on a journey that pulls her through old home movies, love letters, court documents, and conversations with siblings, family friends, and people who knew her mother intimately, in ways Hargitay never did. Piece by piece, she tries to answer the question: Who was Jayne Mansfield?
What makes this documentary stand out is Hargitay’s remarkable bravery in confronting long-buried family secrets and painful truths. She doesn’t shy away from the messier parts of her mother’s life, or her complicated lineage, and her willingness to bring these stories out into the light gives the film its real emotional punch. By sifting through memorabilia, faded letters, and sometimes uncomfortable memories, Hargitay shows us just how layered her mother’s legacy was, and just how much of it the world never bothered to see.
The real irony of this film is that the person who knew Jayne Mansfield the least, her daughter, is the one who manages to illuminate her most fully. The distance, the loss, the missing years, all of it somehow allows Hargitay to approach her mother with a wide-open curiosity. There is no agenda other than understanding. She’s not trying to fix an image; she’s trying to fill a void. That absence becomes the film’s greatest strength, because it invites us to look at Mansfield the way Hargitay does: not just as a sex symbol frozen in time, but as a woman who dreamed, failed, fought, and loved fiercely.
It’s impossible not to feel the weight of that irony. In the process of searching for a mother she never really had the chance to know, Hargitay reveals layers of Mansfield that even those closest to her may have overlooked. And in doing so, she uncovers parts of herself, the daughter, the woman, the survivor, who finally gets to close the distance between myth and memory.
Yes, the film is about Jayne Mansfield, but it’s also about something bigger: how we inherit stories, how we rewrite them, and how we find the courage to claim our truth. It’s a universal, deeply human reminder that our parents are never just the versions of themselves the world wants to remember, and neither are we.
Hargitay, now a powerhouse in her own right, gives us a film that is as much about her healing as it is about her mother’s complicated place in Hollywood lore. It’s not always tidy, and it doesn’t pretend to be. That’s what makes it so powerful.
Grade: B+
