The Mother

I'm usually harsh on British movies as they are generally predictable, over-acted, obvious in dialogue and heavily reliant on cliched emotional set-ups.

Although this could be accused of some of those traits it dealt with a lot of issues very uncomfortably, far more so than if this had been a simple, tidy, loose ends all-tied TV drama. A couple of times I winced at what I was seeing but was fairly quickly drawn back by a follow-up scene which resumed what, overall, was an excellent film.

Emphasis has been given to the older-woman-having-sex aspect but there's far more to this film. If you don't like your family and friends then this might push you to re-evaluate those relationships. Might reaffirm what you have but it's definitely worth seeing although it's not all easy viewing.

"The Mother" is a raw unpeeling of relationships between older parents and adult children in a very contemporary take on the British "kitchen sink drama".

Every character is baldly selfish to the point of startling brutality. Each one responds to attempted openings of lines of communication with "But what about me?"

The naturalism is palpably realistic, such that when Hanif Kureish's script crosses a line to go a bit over the top it's upsetting and jarring.

Director Roger Michell is particularly good at capturing the domestic mise en scene of sounds -- from simultaneous conversations to children's chatter -- and sights, such as lingering over meaningful visuals from a pair of old slippers to a casually bare torso.

Anne Reid gives the gutsiest older woman performance since Kathy Bates in "About Schmidt" and Helen Mirren in "Calendar Girls," but those were mostly played for laughs and didn't reveal the painful de-layering of inhibitions. Her character's continued low self-esteem to the point of accepting abuse is difficult to watch.

Except for a very atypical appearance in the first "Lara Croft," Daniel Craig has avoided depending on his magnetic hunkiness on screen. Here, as in "Sylvia," his manliness is a protean catalyst for the plot. In a complex triangle of relationships, his carpenter obliges the other characters' obsessions to project their fantasies and needs on to him.

While the grandmother finds some independence and self-respect, I'm not optimistic about the grandchildren in this dysfunctional family.

The Mother is a harsh, severe film about relationship and families. The characters are not physically abusive. They are mentally. Adult children who simply do not care or are distant from their parents.

The emptiness of the parent-child relationship is there to see from the beginning as we see Peter Vaughan and Anne Reid travelling on the train to London to see their selfish son and equally selfish daughter.

Reid soon becomes a widow and lives with her children for a while and starts an affair with his son's friend and builder (Daniel Craig) who also happens to be married. He is also having an affair himself with Reid's daughter.

Reid who raised her children, had a job and was almost dutiful to her husband. She is emotionally re-awakened by her affair with the youthful and physical Craig. This is depicted by her etchings.

Contrast this when her daughter tries to set her up with an older man for which she has no emotional connection.

The film does not entirely explain why Craig beds Reid, or why the children are so selfish and even bitter.

The ending leaves a visceral punch to the gut. Almost all the characters are unlikable but at least Reid makes a journey of discovery and decides she doesn't want to waste away in her former marital home.

The film is uneven. It is a glorified television film but writer Hanif Kureishi, despite a few sex scenes handles the themes in a more sensitive and subtle manner than his previous works.

It's hard to imagine a director capable of such godawful crap as 'Notting Hill' pulling off something as sensitive and as attractive as this, but well, here's the evidence and it's quite compelling. Several have alluded to TV drama, and yes, this does have a seventies Play for Today feel at times, but is always a cut above, mainly I think owing to some quite superlative acting from Anne Reid and to a fine script which shadow-boxes with cliché without ever getting one on the nose, except maybe right at the end. (I didn't like either the tracking shot of indifferent goodbyes through the hallway, nor the oh-what-a-beautiful-morning final scene: she deserved a more studied finale than that I think, after all that hard work. The slippers business was a bit OTT too, on reflection).

What I mean about avoiding cliché: well, I for one had a sinking expectation that the "mature" man May's daughter tries to set her up with would be cast in 2 dimensions as a repulsive old bore, so as to point the contrast more painfully with the attractive, virile young geezer he is unwittingly competing with. Instead, we get an unexpectedly subtle and sympathetic cameo of a lonely, clumsy, not entirely unlikeable and very human fellow, who nevertheless doesn't have much of a clue about entertaining a woman. It was around that point I started to sit up and pay more attention. Here was a script that let the actors breathe and do something interesting with fairly minor parts. Almost Mike Leigh in that respect (minus the contrived catharses that the latter inexplicably goes in for).

And of course I was, as everyone probably was, dumbfounded by what Anne Reid does with her character and with her body. She's /not/ "the repressed, dutiful housewife discovering herself for the first time", this is far too simplistic for the character we have. Again and again there are allusions to her having been a "bad housewife", not to mention that thing she does with trays, trying to look nurturing and comely and only succeeding in looking awkward. The daughter accuses her of having "sat in front of the TV all day" instead of, well, whatever her motherly duties might be presumed to have been: she has no answer. She never was a model wife and mother, at least not to herself - that's where a lot of the poignancy comes from, the sense of someone having wasted a life trying to fulfil a role she simply wasn't good at, ever.

While movie titles contains the word 'Mother', the first thing that comes to our mind will be a mother's love for her children.

However, The Mother tells a different story.

The Mother do not discuss the love between a mother and her child, or how she sacrifice herself for the benefit of her child. Here, Notting Hill director Roger Michell tells us how a mother's love for a man about half of her age hurts the people around her.

Before Daniel Craig takes on the role of James Bond, here, he plays Darren, a man who is helping to renovate the house of the son of the mother, and sleeping with her daughter as well. Anne Reid, who was a familiar face on TV series, takes up the challenging role of the leading character, May.

The story begins with May coping with the sudden loss of her husband, Toots, in a family visit to her son, Bobby. While she befriends Darren, a handyman who is doing some renovation in Bobby's house, she was shocked to found out that her daughter, Paula, was sleeping with Darren. At the same time, May was coping with life after the death of Toots. Fearing that Harry and Paula do not wanted her, May starts to find her life going off track, until she spends her afternoon with Darren.

Darren was nice and friendly to May, and May soon finds some affection on Darren. Instead of treating him like a friend, she treated the man who was about half her age with love of a couple. Later, May found sexual pleasure from Darren, where he gave her the pleasure she could never find on anyone else. And this is the beginning of the disaster that could lead to the break down of a family.

The Mother explores the inner world of a widow who wanted to try something she never had in her life, and solace on someone who is there for her to shoulder on. This can be told from May buying tea time snacks for Darren to fulfilling sexual needs from a man younger than her, where it eventually gave her more than she bargained for.

Anne Reid has made a breakthrough for her role of May, as she was previously best well known for her various role on TV series. As she do not have much movies in her career resume, The Mother has put her on the critic's attention. Daniel Craig, on the other hand, had took on a similar role in his movie career, such as Sylvia (2003) and Enduring Love (2004). If his reprising role of James Bond fails, film reviewers should not forget that he has a better performance in small productions in his years of movie career, and The Mother is one of them.

The Mother may not be everyone's favorite, but it is definitely not your usual matinée show to go along with tea and scones, accompanied by butter and jam.