The Washington Post - USA (2022-04-01)

21

EZ

THE

WASHINGTON

POST

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FRIDAY,

APRIL

1, 2022

Movies

to herself; she’s an orphan, and

thus is not expected to visit her

parents, as most of her domestic

colleagues will do. The Nivens,

played with trembling stoicism by

Colin Firth and Olivia Colman,

will picnic with two equally up-

per-crust neighbor families who,

like them, suffered unspeakable

losses during World War I. Be-

tween the Nivens’ dead sons and

two others belonging to the Sher-

inghams, only one boy is left: Paul

(Josh O’Connor), whose phone

call to Jane on Mothering Sunday

morning sets the action in mo-

tion.

Husson films “Mothering Sun-

day” in extreme close-ups and

quick, epigrammatic shots, jump-

ing back and forth in time to Jane

and Josh’s meeting “before the

boys were killed,” and forward to

the 1950s and beyond. The tech-

nique gets at the slippery nature

of time, which here expands, con-

tracts and almost seems to stop,

but it also fatally deflates the com-

pression of Swift’s story, which

takes place not just on one fateful

day but mostly in one house. It’s

there that Jane embarks on a

remarkable journey of discovery

and self-knowledge. Although

she’s working amid the most hide-

bound traditions and taboos of

England’s landed gentry, she’s an

avatar of modernism, even trans-

gression: At one point, she even

becomes a literal nude descend-

ing a staircase.

True to modernism’s great sub-

jects — sex and death — “Mother-

ing Sunday” centers on the costs

of their repression, as well as their

annihilating, liberating proper-

ties. Young and O’Connor inhabit

their characters with the lack of

inhibition and offhand attractive-

ness the roles require, although

they feel as if they’ve been cast in a

series of tableaus rather than a

fleshed-out story. As “Mothering

Sunday” opens to its conclusion

(yet another time shift, featuring a

lovely cameo by Glenda Jackson),

the narrative becomes less a medi-

tation on unresolved loss than art

as an act of appropriation, just as

young Jane casually nicks a book

and pen she admires in a house

she isn’t really supposed to be in.

“Mothering Sunday” is an intrigu-

ing, visually rich film, if not an

entirely necessary one. It proves

— yet again — that the best books

are probably better left alone.

Mothering Sunday 

JAMIE D. RAMSAY/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

R. At area theaters. Contains sexual material, graphic nudity and some strong language. 104 minutes.

Ratings guide

Masterpiece



Very good



Okay



Poor



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Film falls short of novel’s heights

BY ANN HORNADAY

“Mothering Sunday” neatly
embodies all the promises and
pitfalls of literary adaptation.
Based on a spare, exquisitely
crafted novel by Graham Swift,
this thoughtful but ultimately in-
ert dramatization respects its
source material and tries valiantly
to give arresting visual expression
to its finely layered themes. But it
can’t escape the plain fact that it
isn’t Swift’s plot and characters
that make “Mothering Sunday” a
memorable work of art, but his
writing, in all its sensitivity, detail
and heartbreaking restraint.
Given that glaring fact, director
Eva Husson, working from a
script by Alice Birch, does her best
to create a visual language worthy
of Swift’s elegantly allusive prose.
Most of the action of “Mothering
Sunday” takes place in 1924, on
the eponymous holiday known in
the United States as Mother’s Day.
Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young),
who has worked for the aristocrat-
ic Niven family since she was 14, is
looking forward to having the day

Sensitivity and restraint

of 2016 book fail to make

it from page to screen

ROBERT VIGLASKY/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

ABOVE: Odessa Young, left,

stars in “Mothering Sunday”

alongside Josh O’Connor.

LEFT: Young plays a maid and

Olivia Colman, left, a grieving

mother i n the visually arresting

film, which mostly takes place

in 1924 and is based on a novel

by Graham Swift.