The Mother [DVD] [2003]

Astutely observing the intricacies and nuances of English domestic middle-class life, director Roger Michell, allows us to peek into the lives of the elderly May and Toots (Peter Vaughan) as they visit their grown children in London. They are a long-married and well-to-do couple. Bobby (Steven Mackintosh), their busy son has a glamorous life style, a thriving business, a new house, and a wife and two children. Paula (Cathryn Bradshaw), their daughter, is a single mother, a schoolteacher, and an unpublished writer. When Toots suddenly dies of a heart attack, May, in a fit of fear and loneliness, moves in with her children to escape the solitude of her house. Her arrival at Bobby's causes problems so May goes to stay with the busy Paula.

Going back and forth from Paula's flat to Bobby's house, May meets Darren (a gorgeously sexy Daniel Craig), Bobby's robust, muscle-laden best friend who is doing some building work on the house. After Paula asks her mother to find out whether Darren wants to marry her, May becomes friendly with Darren. They have lunch together and there's obviously a connection because May kisses Darren. Soon their friendship becomes physical and with Darren sexually thrilling her, they begin an incredibly hot affair. May is a frumpy grandmother in her sixties, while Darren is a bearded, virile man in his thirties.

All the characters in this film are absolutely mired in dysfunction. May is unhappy and alone, and she fears becoming old. Her children don't particularly like her, and Paula, especially, bitterly resents her; she thinks that May's been a lousy mother who never "encouraged" her. Paula is portrayed as neurotic, hysterical and cloying, and her obsession with Darren totally gets in the way of her ability to see that Darren is kind of useless and doesn't particularly love her. Darren is also haunted: he drinks too much, copes with an autistic son, and sleeps in his car. He's always poor and seeks solace from his problems in doing lines of coke. At first Darren is nice to May, and she offers to take him on as a type of sugar mother to him, but soon she begins to see his other side.

The Mother is a beautifully acted movie with Daniel Craig and Anne Reid giving astoundingly realistic performances. The sex scenes between them both are totally realistic and beautifully done, the connection between them being far more than just sex. Reid is especially good at portraying a complicated, middle-aged woman, who is actively seeking her own fulfillment and rediscovering parts of herself that have lain dormant for years. Craig is also great as her young, spunky suitor easily portraying a good man who seems to be very kind and understanding until May, unrealistically tries to push their relationship. The Mother is a quiet, complex and very adult film that analyses, with a type of subtle restraint, the deleterious effects of selfishness, egocentricity, and self-interest on families. Mike Leonard December 04.

Trapped in the unfamiliarity of London but too scared to go home, May wanders the streets, enjoying the freedom to get lost and generally tries to avoid confrontation with both her offspring and her grief. The only person who shows any form of sympathy towards her is Paula's lover, Darren who chats to her as he builds a conservatory at her son's house. Paula pushes them together with a mind to her mother picking his brains about whether he's going to leave his wife or not.

The couple immediately form a bond whereby they can both express how lost they feel, how they both long to escape and all the other things that her children's obsession with materialism seems to have made them immune to. Despite an age difference of over 30 years, May and Darren become lovers. He is fascinated by her earthy complexity; she finds her inner youth and passion reawakened, sadly all-too briefly.

This is a quietly probing dissection of loss and need. A wonderfully pared screenplay from the consistently brilliant Hanif Kureishi lets the actors movements and facial expressions evoke a great deal of the emotion, giving the viewer the feeling that a lot more has been expressed through dialogue than actually has.

Director, Roger Mitchell benefits from having lesser known actors in the lead roles than we are accustomed to in his films, and this said, Anne Reid is a far more convincing romantic lead than Gwyneth Paltrow in 'Changing Lanes' or Julia Roberts in 'Notting Hill,' despite being 68 years old. It's also refreshing and heartening to see a mainstream director take on an unspoken taboo such as the sexuality of older people and treat it with such respect and sensitivity. This all adds to giving the film a distinctly European feel, something that was backed up by the plaudits it received at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. One feels this change of tone and subject matter seems to borrow something from Patrice Cheraux's take on Kureishi's last cinematic venture - 'Intimacy,' and if so, it is to be applauded.

The ensemble cast work brilliantly together. Daniel Craig turns in a multi-dimensional performance as a troubled man seeking, then rejecting redemption. Steven Mackintosh quietly steals the few scenes he is in and Cathryn Bradshaw is wildly dislikeable as the selfish, deluded daughter, dealing with and avoiding her own guilt at her father's death. But it is undoubtedly Anne Reid in the title role that gives the film its incredible warmth and power and I can only hope that this wonderfully versatile actress's career will now succumb to a similar, deserved renaissance to that experienced by her character.