Mothering Sunday (2021)

Mothering Sunday (2021) is a small, tense film that’s not immediately clear in its intentions. Not terrible, not super exciting, but very nicely made. It’s based on a book that I’ve never heard of and I guess some folks were excited by?

The main story takes place over one day in 1924, with lots of little flashbacks (that are probably just within the same year or so) and flash-forwards to perhaps the early ’30s and at least one period that’s much later. The characters in the main story are still dealing with the aftermath of World War I, specifically that a generation of young men have been killed in their prime. Olivia Colman is one mother whose son didn’t come back from the war, and Colin Firth is her husband, also traumatized, but trying to stiff-upper-lip it for her and everyone else.

But they’re secondary characters, as it’s Odessa Young, their maid Jane, who the plot revolves around. She’s having an affair with one of the few men who didn’t go to war, a younger son who survived his brothers, played by Josh O’Connor, in an oddly similar role to the young version of Prince Charles he portrayed in The Crown (2019-20). In the flash-forwards, Jane is a writer, and she seems to be working through the earlier events of the affair and its complications in her fiction.

As this review in The Standard complains, “so many things about Jane character arc jar.” And overall, I didn’t get a lot out of this flick other than it sucks to have people you love die unexpectedly, which, no shit. This isn’t breaking new ground, and the way the story is told isn’t particularly new either, just adding a touch of the wish-fulfillment that light fiction is prone to. I wonder why this collection of big-name actors were drawn to this script — there’s even a cameo by Glenda Jackson as older award-winning writer Jane, in one of her very last screen performances. Plus, the most excellent costume designer Sandy Powell signed on to outfit this flick in lovely, if nothing amazingly new, period frocks.

It’s the costumes that make this more than a one-line review because there’s a few really gorgeous ’20s outfits worth looking at. The families have a luncheon during that day in 1924, and for starters, all the women are wearing wonderful hats! Olivia Coleman’s character and Emma D’Arcy’s have the stand-out ensembles here, full of glorious period details and accessories.

Oh, and there’s several sex scenes, one of which is followed by a long scene of Josh O’Connor getting dressed where he’s full-frontal naked. More interesting than the dangly bits is how he’s putting on each precise layer of a ’20s upper-class gentleman’s outfit from the skin out. Nice to see all the proper underwear bits on the fellas too.

Have you seen Mothering Sunday?

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