L.S. Lowry - Retratos de uma Paixão

This is a gem, precious in every way, and makes you wonder how much longer we'll be able to invest this kind of attention and feeling into film. Half a generation more? I'm beginning to understand the internet, ratings, and what they mean about who we are. They point, just not in the right way.

This marvelous film is steeped in Beckettian tropes and style. The mother son relationship is akin to Hamm and Clov in 'Endgame', or it might be Winnie in 'Happy Days'.

Even the reality of Lowry and his mother is not so far from Beckett and his own fractious relationship with his mother. Vanessa Redgrave even resembles Beckett as an old man with his spectacles.

The film echoes Beckett's maxim, 'to fail again, fail better' almost with the same sense as Lowry follows his own path against the odds and faces years of rejection and hostility, not the least from his mother who lacks imagination and only understands what she sees, not the meaning. Indeed the film has a very strong layers of social history in it as it reveals the neuroses and social anxieties of the period in England.

The excellent script is matched by admirable directing and editing together with technical features to make the 1930s flat and town vivid.

And then there are performances from Spall and Redgrave which are the pinnacle of skill and empathy. It is a consummate and perfectly poised interaction between the two.

If only other films gave their audience as much.

This story is heart wrenching! The mother is a woman who uses every opportunity to put her son down, and I feel genuinely sad and sorry for Mr Lowry.

I got very lucky on this one as I wandered into a senior cits viewing. At the beginning they tittered and the ones who felt they always should get their money's worth - guffawed. Oh, she was so sweet & humorous the old Lady in the bed with just harmless jibes at her son. But then when it never stops, and we hear things like (to paraphrase): "it is important to always be seen in a good light by your neighbours" as well she only began to see her son's talent when a recently entrenched neighbour with bourgeois pretensions said his seaside painting was delightful - did she then consider it. This is a deeply ingrained bourgeois-ism in the English psyche and not say like Gerard Depardieu not wanting to appear in a Truffaut movie because he felt he had 'gone bourgeois' - you don't go bourgeois - it is a heavily sanctioned part of the society you grow up in. Luckily through all the turmoil he kept at his painting because near the end of his life they were worth a fortune. And as we learn about how little support he had as an artist the audience quietened down considerably - reflecting you would think on bourgeois pretensions of their own.

This is a mesmerizingly slow film set almost entirely in one room..... it could almost be a play. However Adrian Noble thankfully focuses on the two main actors and we are gradually sucked in to their closed little world. Both Spall and Redgrave give towering complementary performances which keep the audience completely entranced from the beginning. Redgrave especially manages to create a relentlessly critical and bitter character without the viewer ever hating her for it.. and Spall has grown into a confident and creative character actor of the highest order. Beautiful cinematography and set design make this film artistically watchable. If you like slow burning drama then this is a treat.