★ 6 / 10
This is quite a tough film to watch
CinemaSerf
This is quite a tough film to watch. Not so much because of the subject matter, but because you just know there is an inevitability about the conclusion which…
This is quite a tough film to watch. Not so much because of the subject matter, but because you just know there is an inevitability about the conclusion which is going to leave everyone damaged! Anne Reid is good as the eponymous character ("Mary") who loses her husband and finds that she just cannot go home. She spends her time between her son and his family and with her daughter and her young son. The former is having his house extended, and so has employed "Darren" (Daniel Craig) - who just happens to be the married boyfriend of her daughter "Paula" (Cathryn Bradshaw). Lonely and craving human companionship, "Mary" gradually becomes infatuated with this hunky tradesman, despite him being half her age, and he is all too willing to help her out. Obviously, her family find out and that's when it all goes awry. It's also when the plot heads full speed into melodrama. This already pretty dysfunctional family sees the wheels come off and the nuanced, emotional and sensitive elements are jettisoned for anger and an sense of the truly unpleasant and course develops. Reid and Craig have a couple of decent scenes together, but for the most part the remaining cast are all pretty lacklustre and the longer it goes on, the more desperate it seems to shock - for the sake of it. The age-gap relationship/sex storyline could have delivered something more here had director Roger Michell not just chickened out.
★ 8 / 10
When a mother's love hurts
samuelding85
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…
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.
★ 6 / 10
Fine acting, but no-one to like in this family
Philby-3
There's a very fine review by law prof on these pages and not much for me to add. Ann Reid puts in a superb performance as the middle-aged mum whose desires…
There's a very fine review by law prof on these pages and not much for me to add. Ann Reid puts in a superb performance as the middle-aged mum whose desires are re-awakened by her bullying husband's sudden death and Daniel Craig plays the Rough Trade tradesman with great gusto. There's also a wonderful cameo from Oliver Ford Davies as an elderly and inept suitor for Mum's hand. The story is told very clearly with sparkling photography the cheerful visual atmosphere being rather at odds with the grim storyline.
My problem however with the film is that everyone in it is either completely repulsive (eg the son and daughter in law and the rough tradesman) or is behaving badly. Mum is a sympathetic character but she makes all the wrong choices, and behaves pretty selfishly, though we do get an inkling as to why. She wouldn't be the first Mum to kick over the traces after a long marriage to a dominant partner. But we wind up feeling sorry for her daughter rather than Mum because she gets done over, not because she is otherwise sympathetic.
The trouble with movies like this that, though they are true to life and emotionally convincing, they leave an unpleasant aftertaste. Are we all that selfish and immature? Well, families are dangerous places and the majority of murders are committed by a member of the victim's families, but relatively speaking murder is a rare crime. Competition between mother and daughter for the same (trashy) lover is probably pretty rare also. When it does happen, a film about it is probably justified. Still, at the end we wind up with no-one to like, which rather muffles the impact of the story.
79%
TOMATOMETER
· 89 reviews
64%
AUDIENCE
· 2.5K ratings
6.7/10
5K
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dead seed