Mothering Sunday

1hr 44mins (15)

Intelligent adaptation of

Graham Swift’s novel

★★★

Adapted from Graham Swift’s slender novel, Mothering Sunday is a “gorgeous, poignant” tale of forbidden love, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. The date is 30 March 1924, and the absence of the young men killed in the First World War is felt everywhere in the winding lanes of Oxfordshire. Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor) is the one survivor out of three brothers, while the owners of the neighbouring grand estate, the Nivens (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), have been left childless. Paul is supposed to be attending a lunch to celebrate his engagement to a woman from his own class, but instead he lingers in bed with the Nivens’ maid, Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), with whom he is pursuing a tender affair. Alice Birch’s script does “remarkable” things in opening up the story for the screen, and the production values are terrific. O’Connor gives a tragically disarming performance, while Glenda Jackson, who plays the older Jane in flashforward, is on fine form.

Told from Jane’s point of view, this is an “ingenious, sensuous and quietly subversive film” that turns typical costume drama conventions on their head, said Geoffrey Macnab in The i Paper. The characters’ emotions are explored obliquely, but the scenes in which Paul and Jane make love are unusually frank. There’s a dreamlike feel to it all, enhanced by Morgan Kibby’s mournful score. A French director isn’t the obvious choice for a British period drama, said Anna Smith in Time Out, but Eva Husson nails this one. A sad indictment of a society unable to articulate its emotions,

Mothering Sunday isn’t exactly a cheery watch, but it’s an intelligent, affecting drama “with a splash of French sensuality”.