The Mother
- Film Worth:$13.50
- FILMINK rates movies out of $20 - the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Roger Michell wants to scare you. He must, for why else would the director of...
Roger Michell wants to scare you. He must, for why else would the director of such flippantly romantic fodder as Notting Hill make a film anchored on graphic sex scenes between a grandmother and a handyman half her age? Pulling no punches, The Mother introduces us to May, a 65-year-old grandmother whose simple, domestic life is upturned by the death of her husband. Once alone, May finds that her children's sympathies for her desolation are limited at best - when she needs them most, she finds the people she raised are selfish, self-obsessed and most painfully of all, blame her for their poor emotional well being. Violently lonely, May fixates on handyman Darren (Daniel Craig), her loopy daughter's married boyfriend. Slightly unhinged himself, young Darren agrees to the old woman's pleas for his sexual attention, and becomes her lover.
As far as groundbreaking, soul searching seediness and discomfort go, this is as good as (or as difficult) as it gets. Hanif Kureishi's (The Buddha of Suburbia, My Beautiful Laundrette) script is as tender as it is cold-hearted, smacking a rusty nail into May's desperate loneliness and leaving it up as a bloody exhibit. It will make you wriggle in your seat, but this is subject matter never before so brutally or realistically explored.
If you can't deal with scenes of nana having anal sex, steer well clear. If you want to be truly, irreparably affected by a film for once in your life, go and see The Mother. It will take you somewhere you may never have had the courage to venture.
