MRS LOWRY & SON
Paint and suffering…
CERTIFICATE PG DIRECTOR Adrian Noble STARRING Timothy Spall, Vanessa Redgrave, Stephen Lord, Wendy Morgan SCREENPLAY Martyn Hesford DISTRIBUTOR Vertigo RUNNING TIME 91 mins
Is it now illegal for famous British painters to be portrayed on film by anyone other than Timothy Spall? After his trophy-toting turn as the eccentric Mr. Turner (2014) for Mike Leigh, Spall picks up his brushes again as outsider artist L.S. Lowry, famous for his vividly stylised 1930s Manchester street scenes, peopled with ‘matchstick men’.
Locked in a volatile relationship with his short-fused, bedbound mother (a superbly self-pitying Vanessa Redgrave), who snobbishly refuses to support his art, his tiny terraced house rings with nightly recriminations.
Chasing his dream of a London show for his unpopular artwork (“Mr. Lowry’s painting is an insult to the people of Lancashire” is his sole local review), this well-meaning but turgid biopic sets Spall’s dreamy, grounddown Lowry roaming Manchester to capture its grimy, everyday beauty on canvas. Dodgy CGI recreations of red-brick factories and railway bridges
undermine the film’s conjuring of his unique vision, however. Director Adrian Noble, best known for his Shakespeare stage productions, can’t open up the story beyond the quarrelsome play it was originally conceived as.
The dialogue crackles nicely, though, both mother and son railing at their respective fates (“I haven’t been cheerful since 1868,” is Mrs. Lowry’s mournful cry). There are also two powerhouse performances, with a rarely better Redgrave pinballing from bed-jacketed harpy to sweetly reminiscing mummy. Spall’s banked resentment, meanwhile, threatens a volcanic confrontation. But the awkward coda, which tacks on a whirlwind look at today’s Lowry gallery, should definitely have got the red-pencil treatment. Kate Stables
THE VERDICT
The domestic battle between Redgrave’s wrathful mum and Spall’s dreamer is Oedipal, but not complex.