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The Mother (2003)

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3 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Anyone who thought Calendar Girls bottled it will find this an altogether meatier proposition. Scripted by the congenitally unsentimental Hanif Kureishi, The Mother gives Reid the role of a lifetime as the recently widowed May, who comes down to stay with her middle class son in London and can't find the courage to leave. Even then, it's only her son's friend Darren (Craig) who sees May as a person, not an antiquated nuisance. They become friends and, secretly, lovers. Reid is wonderful, subtly revealing a difficult, longtime repressed woman coming out of her shell under the attentive curiosity of the younger man. Michell treats the sex scenes just so, with frankness, humour and compassion. It's only in the wider social realm that this affair assumes the status of taboo. May's grown children busily set about fixing her up with a likely partner never imagining the object of her real heart's desire lies so close to home. Very handsomely shot, the film exists in an altogether different zone to Michell's Notting Hill - this is a London natives may actually recognise. It's a shame, though, that the melodramatic showdown smacks of nothing more than bad faith.

Author: TCh

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

How could any of this be said...

Posted on Jan 21 2012 23:23 How could any of this be beettr stated? It couldn't.

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marie adams said...

Posted on Jul 16 2009 16:12 I've read all the review of this film I can find. Nobody seems to realise that this is a modern film alright. This is a mother and daughter film. The words that the daughter was saying to her mother came right out of the mouth of my daughter... This is about invasion of territory, this is about cross over in the mother/daughter divide. It's about betrayal and revenge. All refer to the melodramatic end. The Mother has transgressed. She has been, to use Jungian terminology, a Terrible Mother. In the end she gets her just deserts. How can that be called a 'melodramatic showdown'? The film is a Modern Tragedy. I was so disturbed by it I couldn't get to sleep that night... Because I'm a mother...

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usman khawaja said...

Posted on Apr 20 2008 11:31 its rather cheesy and tries to sensationalise but just bores with a theme done much better in graduate -very bourgeois and lacklustre with no style
the script is anyting but dull and pretentious and craig looks like a gigolo

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