The Mother

Of all the films I have seen this year (2004), none has affected me as deeply and personally as "The Mother", and on so many levels.

For one thing, watching May deal with the grief and loss and sudden disorientation of widowhood, I could not help wondering how my own mother will cope when the time comes, as it surely must, for her and indeed for all of us.

But, as May's story unfolded, it was my own sense of grief and loss and disorientation that I experienced anew. May and I share something in common: not widowhood, but age, or rather the loss of youth, and the invisibility and untouchability that come with age.

I could relate to May's need for passion, her need to be loved, her need, not so much for sex, but simply to be touched. But as we grow older, we are ironically shut out and shunted aside and denied the very thing our souls cry out for. (Note: There are some disturbing and shocking images of sexuality in "The Mother", but don't let them put you off and blind you to the real message of the film.)

May, at least, rediscovers another passion within -- to create art -- and so is able to live again. Not all of us are so fortunate. In this respect, I identify more with May's daughter Paula who, when love and passion fail and die, feels that her creative expression is no longer valid and worthwhile, and destroys her works in a fit of despair.

May is a woman in her late 60s; I am a gay man in my late 40s. Yet our stories are similar in so many ways. What May experiences in a matter of weeks, I have felt over the past decade. My passion has yet to be rediscovered.

It is no accident that "The Mother" was scripted by Hanif Kureishi, who gave us "My Beautiful Laundrette", a love story about two gay men in the flower of youth. "The Mother" is at the other end of the spectrum, a story about age and the denial of passion. To paraphrase the title of another Kureishi film, "The Mother" might aptly be titled "Sammy and Rosie Get Old".

"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.

A fierce, shockingly intelligent piece of work from the gifted British writer Hanif Kureishi who wrote "My Beautiful Laundrette", (this is the best thing he's done since then). It's about intelligent people whose lives don't add up to much. They've squandered what they have been given and are largely empty vessels. The only character on screen who is alive is the mother of the title yet she feels dead inside until a rough handyman shows her some affection and awakens her to the joys of sex. He has his own motives but Kureishi treats him with a good deal of compassion. This is a film in which people and places feel familiar, where characters exist beyond the confines of the screen. In some respects it's a bit like "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" but it's an altogether tougher piece of work. The director, Roger Michell, allows scenes to build instinctively. And it is beautifully acted.

As the eponymous mother Anne Reid betrays her wasted life in every gesture. There is not a false note in her extraordinarily lived-in performance, and that very fine actor Daniel Craig displays shadings to his character than even Kureishi hasn't tapped into. If the film strikes a false note it is, perhaps, in the character of the talentless daughter, caught up in a messy affair with the man her mother seduces (or should that be the other way round) and even messier life, but she is so well played by Cathryn Bradshaw she hooks you in nevertheless. The film is also extremely beautiful to look at (DoP Alwin Kuchler) and must rank, unhesitatingly, as the best British film of the year.

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.

Kids - of whatever age - do not want to know about their parents' sex lives. And grown-up children are often seriously baffled and disconcerted by any evidence that aging parents possess an active libido. Lastly, many moviegoers are very uncomfortable watching a dowdy, frumpy widow who would pass unnoticed almost anywhere discover her aching capacity and need for raw passion with a handsome man half her age.

"The Mother" is a provocative look at a scarcely filmed reality - a woman who isn't ready to stay home, watch "the telly," and vegetate after her husband of nearly three decades, and a controlling, dominating chap at that, packs it in with a massive heart attack.

May (Anne Reid) and her husband have two children, each dysfunctional in his or her own way. The male son lives with a beautiful wife who may well be driving him to the Bankruptcy Court with her extravagant commercial venture. Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw), is a teacher with aspirations of succeeding as a writer. She's attractive, not pretty, and she seems to have a close relationship with mum - at first.

Back at her house after burying her husband, May determines to not stay there. Rejecting typical widowhood with its legacy of boring days and no adventure, she goes to stay with Paula who has a young son. Paula's boyfriend, Darren (Daniel Craig), is a ruggedly handsome contractor who seems to be taking an awfully long time to complete an addition to May's son's house. May is quite taken with hard-drinking, coke-sniffing Darren whose treatment of Paula ought to have alerted May that he was, for sure, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Cads.

What follows is a torrid affair between Darren and the besotted and now bubblingly alive (dare I say reborn?) widow. The love scenes are graphic but take second place to amateur artist May's pen and ink sketches of their trysts which then play a role in the enfolding drama (or debacle, take your pick).

The theater in Manhattan was packed for today's early afternoon showing with well over half the audience in the range of May's age. That some were shocked or disturbed to see her disporting herself with erotic abandon in the arms of a much younger man is an understatement.

This blindingly honest look at an older woman's awakened passion after decades of dutifully obeying her husband's desire that she stay at home and raise kids (she also mentions he didn't like her to have friends-what a guy) surfaces a number of issues. While May's dalliance with Darren doesn't constitute incest, there are real psychological dimensions, and issues, with a mother bedding her daughter's lover. And Paula isn't made of the stoutest stuff to begin with. The affair, once disclosed, allows the peeling open of the mother-daughter relationship which, from Paula's viewpoint, left something to be desired. Ms. Bradshaw is excellent in the role of a daughter who wants her mother's support as well as her love-she hasn't been dealt a terrible hand by life but it isn't a bed of roses either.

May is strong in her resolve to both acknowledge her sexuality and expect, indeed demand, a future of happiness. But she is also inescapably vulnerable. She's fishing in uncharted emotional waters. Who controls her relationship with Darren and why are difficult issues for her to understand, much less resolve. In her sixties, she's still a work in progress.

"Something's Gotta Give" recently showcased mature sexuality but in an amusingly antiseptic way assuring no viewer would be discomfited. After all it's Jack Nicholson and the always beautiful Diane Keaton cavorting in the world of the rich. And to insure that no serious psycho-social issues were explored, Keaton's young girlfriend, Amanda Peet, daughter of Keaton, not only blesses the match but insures that the audience knows she and her old(er) would-be lover never hopped into the sack.

No easy out here. Anne Reid's inspired performance forces discomfort on some while drawing respect from others. Her naked body bursts with sexuality for some and appears absurd as an object of physical attraction to others (the comments of audience members leaving today reflected all these views).

Kudos to director Roger Michell for tackling a fascinating story with verve and empathy.

9/10.