MOTHERING SUNDAY
****
Director: Eva Husson
Screenwriter: Alice Birch, based on the eponymous novel by Graham Swift.
Principal cast:
Odessa Young
Josh O’Connor
Olivia Colman
Colin Firth
Sope Dìrísù
Glenda Jackson
Country: UK/Germany
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 104 mins.
Australian release date: 2 June 2022.
The Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift has seen a number of his novels turned into movies, although not for some time - the most recent one was Last Orders, which Fred Schepisi filmed in 2001. Now, Swift’s 2016 book Mothering Sunday has been directed by Eva Husson, whose last dramatic feature was 2018’s powerful Girls of the Sun, about a battalion of Kurdish women soldiers fighting ISIS terrorists. Mothering Sunday is a very different film to that one; it’s set in 1924 in the genteel world of the English landed gentry and it tells the story of a young woman working as a maid in a country manor house. An orphan “comprehensively bereaved at birth” and lacking a formal education, she’s an astute young woman who dreams of making more of her life. In this, she is aided by her love of books and reading.
It’s March 30th, Mothering Sunday (now called Mothers’ Day), a day in which tradition dictated that the household staff be granted the day off. The maid, Jane Fairchild (Australian actress Odessa Young giving a wonderful performance), bicycles over to the home of her secret lover after her employers, the Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), leave for an outdoor luncheon engagement with two other families, also a tradition. Jane’s paramour is, in fact, the well-born son of one of the families they will be dining with, Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), and Paul has promised to join the group later on. As the lovers enjoy each other’s charms, we learn more about them and the picnickers and understand that they have all been profoundly affected by the loss of loved ones during World War I. We also realise that the daughter of one of the families is engaged to be married – to none other than Paul.
This is much more than a romantic tale of doomed love, though. In the hands of acclaimed British playwright and scriptwriter Alice Birch (who wrote the script for Lady Macbeth), the screenplay of Mothering Sunday becomes an examination of grief and a story of change, because the lives of the protagonists are on the cusp of a new world. The Great Depression, the Second World War and modernity are all ahead of them and their pastoral realm is coming to an end. Indeed, some of them have concluded that it already has due to the terrible toll of the war. Firth and Colman are terrific, of course, in their portrayal of a couple whose life has changed inexorably – she’s lost all her spark and he spends his days trying to fan it back into life – and the sense of sorrow they convey is palpable. O’Connor’s Paul, although happy in the company of Jane, seems touched by world-weariness, too – not from wealth and privilege but, rather, bereavement. Odessa Young is a revelation, firstly as a young woman and, later, as one of more mature years. “I was nervous,” she says. “It's the first time I've ever played someone who goes from being a 15, 16-year-old [in flashbacks to 1918] to a woman in her forties, and I really didn't know that I was going to be able to do it or that it was happening until maybe two weeks before I was due to be [in England].” She needn’t have worried because she certainly rose to the occasion. Sope Dìrísù has a crucial role as the other man in Jane’s life and he plays it with great conviction. It’s also pleasing to see Glenda Jackson back on the big screen, albeit relatively briefly, for the first time in more than three decades.
Husson has once again employed the talents of multi-skilled musician and composer Morgan Kibby to provide the score for Mothering Sunday (they previously worked together on Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story and Girls of the Sun). Kibby has written a gentle, moving, evocative and, it must be said, sad composition that suits the tone of the film very well. The legendary designer Sandy Powell, a three-time Oscar winner, did the costumes, so there’s an extraordinary amount of talent on display in the film. The bucolic locations are gorgeous, too. Mothering Sunday is a cinematic time-machine that will transport you to another time and place.
Screenwriter: Alice Birch, based on the eponymous novel by Graham Swift.
Principal cast:
Odessa Young
Josh O’Connor
Olivia Colman
Colin Firth
Sope Dìrísù
Glenda Jackson
Country: UK/Germany
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 104 mins.
Australian release date: 2 June 2022.
The Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift has seen a number of his novels turned into movies, although not for some time - the most recent one was Last Orders, which Fred Schepisi filmed in 2001. Now, Swift’s 2016 book Mothering Sunday has been directed by Eva Husson, whose last dramatic feature was 2018’s powerful Girls of the Sun, about a battalion of Kurdish women soldiers fighting ISIS terrorists. Mothering Sunday is a very different film to that one; it’s set in 1924 in the genteel world of the English landed gentry and it tells the story of a young woman working as a maid in a country manor house. An orphan “comprehensively bereaved at birth” and lacking a formal education, she’s an astute young woman who dreams of making more of her life. In this, she is aided by her love of books and reading.
It’s March 30th, Mothering Sunday (now called Mothers’ Day), a day in which tradition dictated that the household staff be granted the day off. The maid, Jane Fairchild (Australian actress Odessa Young giving a wonderful performance), bicycles over to the home of her secret lover after her employers, the Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), leave for an outdoor luncheon engagement with two other families, also a tradition. Jane’s paramour is, in fact, the well-born son of one of the families they will be dining with, Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), and Paul has promised to join the group later on. As the lovers enjoy each other’s charms, we learn more about them and the picnickers and understand that they have all been profoundly affected by the loss of loved ones during World War I. We also realise that the daughter of one of the families is engaged to be married – to none other than Paul.
This is much more than a romantic tale of doomed love, though. In the hands of acclaimed British playwright and scriptwriter Alice Birch (who wrote the script for Lady Macbeth), the screenplay of Mothering Sunday becomes an examination of grief and a story of change, because the lives of the protagonists are on the cusp of a new world. The Great Depression, the Second World War and modernity are all ahead of them and their pastoral realm is coming to an end. Indeed, some of them have concluded that it already has due to the terrible toll of the war. Firth and Colman are terrific, of course, in their portrayal of a couple whose life has changed inexorably – she’s lost all her spark and he spends his days trying to fan it back into life – and the sense of sorrow they convey is palpable. O’Connor’s Paul, although happy in the company of Jane, seems touched by world-weariness, too – not from wealth and privilege but, rather, bereavement. Odessa Young is a revelation, firstly as a young woman and, later, as one of more mature years. “I was nervous,” she says. “It's the first time I've ever played someone who goes from being a 15, 16-year-old [in flashbacks to 1918] to a woman in her forties, and I really didn't know that I was going to be able to do it or that it was happening until maybe two weeks before I was due to be [in England].” She needn’t have worried because she certainly rose to the occasion. Sope Dìrísù has a crucial role as the other man in Jane’s life and he plays it with great conviction. It’s also pleasing to see Glenda Jackson back on the big screen, albeit relatively briefly, for the first time in more than three decades.
Husson has once again employed the talents of multi-skilled musician and composer Morgan Kibby to provide the score for Mothering Sunday (they previously worked together on Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story and Girls of the Sun). Kibby has written a gentle, moving, evocative and, it must be said, sad composition that suits the tone of the film very well. The legendary designer Sandy Powell, a three-time Oscar winner, did the costumes, so there’s an extraordinary amount of talent on display in the film. The bucolic locations are gorgeous, too. Mothering Sunday is a cinematic time-machine that will transport you to another time and place.