The Mother (2004)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The Mother is a very intelligent drama, one that would guarantee to have you talking, a taboo topic that isn't often visited. The question, how should someone when they're in advanced years, retired and had families behave? Should they put their slippers on and await the inevitable Nursing Home, or should they go wild, grabbing opportunities as they arise.The story is a complex one, but intelligent and thought provoking. The main thing i'm sure many will ask is, is May a good person or not? Do her feelings for Darren come from a good place, come from grief, or has a hidden passion burned away her entire life? I felt bad for Paula, a daughter slightly messed up, who's set to find out the worst possible news about the love of her life.Superb performances, Anne Reid is phenomenal as May, she totally steals the show with a powerhouse performance, where she displays passion and total apathy. Daniel Craig is also superb, you can totally believe in May falling for his character, handsome, care free, but all is not as it seems.Brilliant, and a reminder of how good the quality of film making is from The BBC, I ask though, why has this style of show vanished from our screens?Quality viewing, 9/10

In what has to rank as one of the mainstream cinema's most daunting pieces of subject matter, this BBC produced film explores the sexual relationship between a 60-something woman and a handyman 30 years her junior. Reid plays a grandmother (pushing 70!) whose feeble husband has managed to keep her tied to him and mostly subservient to him throughout their marriage (mostly due to the times, more than from a deliberate cruelty on his part.) While visiting their upwardly mobile and emotionally distant son in London (and also their daughter, who lives in the same vicinity), the husband (Vaughn) dies abruptly. Faced with a life of sitting in a chair watching the telly, Reid decides to return to London and reconnect with her children and grandchildren, who barely know her. Her extraordinarily neurotic and selfish daughter (Bradshaw) is carrying on an affair with the same handyman (Craig) who is building a conservatory onto the son's townhouse and asks Reid for advice about how to handle him. As Reid begins to strike up an acquaintance with Craig, she begins to find him appealing to herself and starts to unlock a lot of pent up feelings regarding her long lost sexuality and feelings of intimacy. Craig, who appreciates Reid's kind manner and thoughtful intellect, becomes drawn to her as well, causing plenty of drama and turmoil in an already unstable family. What could have been the world's most tawdry and tasteless film is saved by the deeply committed performance of Reid in the title role. She is given plenty of time to paint her character before the more sensationalistic scenes take place. It's a bit of a commentary on society that there's any discomfort at all in seeing a woman in her late 60's go to bed with a man far younger when when do the same thing quite frequently, but the disparity exists nonetheless. The scenes here are handled about as well as they could be in presenting the passion and sexuality of the situation without becoming too explicit. Craig does a very nice job here as well (displaying a much skinnier and less tantalizing body that he would later present in "Casino Royale"), but his character does seem to pendulum a lot with little or no explanation. He and Reid establish a nice chemistry between them in the scenes prior to their sexual liaisons. Other performances are strong, if not always appealing. Davies appears as a suitor more close to Reid's age and is alternately pleasant and repellent. The pace of the film is sure to test the patience of some viewers as it takes its time to build the story and includes a lot of quiet, dreamy scenes. London has rarely been presented this sunnily (the director also did "Notting Hill") which makes for a nice contrast to the sometimes downbeat goings-on. The film was shot using only natural or ambient light which may be why the director shot during so many sunny periods versus the stereotypical cloudy ones. It's a challenging work, but not without rewards. Just as in 1955's "All That Heaven Allows", a widow with two snotty children, who long for her to stay at home with the TV, creates a stir when she begins seeing a younger laborer with whom she's established an emotional connection. Now, of course, it's been ratcheted up with sexuality and the angle of the man being the daughter's lover as well, but the story thrust is pretty much the same.

"The Mother" is basically Mildred Pierce in the reverse without the shooting.When mama and papa go to visit their children and grandchildren, grandfather drops dead and grandmother decides to stay with her daughter.To make a long story short, the old woman has an affair with a carpenter who is also sleeping with her daughter. This is disgusting at best.The old girl (Ann Reid) has been quite a naughty lady. She admits that she has done this before her husband's untimely death.While I realize that the message of the film is not to put our old seniors right out to pasture, we don't have to go to this extreme.All men, young and old in this film, are depicted as either being too busy or that they readily jump in bed as soon as there is one available.Grandfather was lucky to get away from all this. This is certainly no way to treat an elderly lady. When the daughter finds out that mother has been unfaithful, she socks the old girl. Sock the director and writer of this trash as well.

With the death of her infirmed husband, May, an older woman faces a future in an urban world that views her as invisible, dead from the neck down, and unwelcome in the pseudo- sophisticated yuppie homes of her son, Bobby and his shallow wife, Helen, and Paula, a self- absorbed, clinging, and minimally talented daughter. The central family is anything but warm, supportive, and understanding of her new and tragic stage in life as a widow. The Mother is a quiet character study that points up how in some societies, an elder parent is both unwelcome and seen as a burden to grownup children whose careers and status seeking overshadow all else. As May comes to realize the world is still important to her, the lonely widow finds her libido reawakened and alive with her daughter's boyfriend, Derrek (Daniel Craig), a carpenter and rough sort. May embarks on an uninhibited sexual affair with Darrek whose character is sympathetic to her at first, but his flawed nature is quickly revealed through the pressures of the women who surround him.This is the kind of role Hollywood actresses of a certain age whine is never written for them, but they would never appear in because of the frankness, overt sexuality, unglamorous wardrobe, little makeup, and social commentary on the vapidness of the very society that most film industry middle age actresses are enchrenched. The performance of lead actress, Anne Reid ranges from quiet to giddy and her interpretation blossoms on screen from the drab widow to a sexually alive and freed up middle age woman whose performance is sans face-lift, hair extensions, botox, and liposuction. She bares more than her soul on-screen with Craig.Craig as the enabling handyman who beds mother and daughter turns in another stellar performance that is at first sympathetic to the widow's situation, but in the end is without redemption. As his true nature unfold and he is literally the rooster in a hen-house his aimless inability to say no to the ex-wife, boring girlfriend, and her mother is blamed as the root of his ineffectual existence. While good with his hands at building a conservatory, he is unable to construct meaning in his life.One of the best films from Britain in years, it is simply adult in its storyline. The Mother is the rare kind of film that is perhaps too honest for American audiences to tolerate having no car chase, no bling, no rap soundtrack to drown out the cretin performances by TV starlets and buff studmuffins. The Mother reflects how the aging baby boomers are now disposable people that offspring are willing to overlook, send to the retirement home, and get out of the way. May doesn't know what to do as she is made alive by Darren, isn't willing to go to the old folks home, and finds her kids are more conservative than she ever was at their age.