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| Anne Reid plays a hot-and-bothered senior in The Mother. |
May (Anne Reid) is a sixtyish woman from the lower-middle-class British suburbs whose husband dies at the beginning of The Mother, leaving her in Notting Hill in the grudging care of her children. She’s not ready for old age, but she’s never had much of a life up until now, either: She stayed at home all her married years because, as she says, “we didn’t have that feminism then.” Her daughter, Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw), takes her in, but the resentments between them are palpable. Paula says her mother has never “valued” her—this is her justification for carrying on a self-defeating affair with a married man, Darren (Daniel Craig), who is doing some construction work for the family. Unbeknownst to Paula, May also falls for Darren, who comes across as a combination gigolo and helpmate.
Few movies have explored the reality of senior sexuality, especially women’s, so it’s doubly fine that director Roger Michell and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi (who last collaborated on the BBC mini-series The Buddha of Suburbia) do so with such smirkless compassion. When she’s with Darren, May shows off not so much the young woman she once was but, rather, the woman she wanted to be. The sex scenes between them are mini-dramas: She is awakened by her own avidity while he is almost bemused by what he has unleashed. Reid’s performance is a bit colorless—this role requires an actress whose face continually reveals new sides, and outside the bedroom Reid’s too often rests in blank repose. But there is in The Mother a rich understanding of where old age takes you. Along with the myth that seniors don’t have sex drives, the film dispels a larger one: that the years bring wisdom.
(1 hr. 52 mins.;
R)
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PETER RAINER
Opens on May 28 at Landmark Sunshine Cinema, 212-330-8182
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