The Mother [DVD] [2003]

The movies have their share of gray-haired men romancing young women, but the spectacle of a sexual relationship between an old woman and a young man is still exotic enough for The Mother to startle audiences. Newly widowed Anne Reid, sixtyish, finds herself disenchanted with her indifferent children, and drawn to a studly handyman (Daniel Craig, from Sylvia). The observant directorial hand of Roger Michell guides them through some brutally frank sex scenes, without ignoring the psychological mess that underlies it all. It comes as no surprise that this scenario springs from the mind of Hanif Kureishi, who's been poking at British propriety since My Beautiful Laundrette. The film offers no characters to actually like, which makes it a bitter course to navigate. But Anne Reid's gutsy performance, which carries zero trace of glamour, is certainly a bold venture that asks no pity. --Robert Horton

The most talked about and controversial British film for years, The Mother centres around an uncomfortably atypical relationship, far more shocking than that of Harold and Maude. May is an ordinary grandmother from the suburbs. When her husband dies on a family visit to London, she recedes into the background of her busy, metropolitan children’s lives. Stuck in an unfamiliar city far from home, May fears that she has become another invisible old woman whose life is more or less over. Until, that is, she falls for Darren, a man half her age who is renovating her son’s house and sleeping with her daughter.

• Cast and crew interviews
  
• Theatrical trailer

"A superbly acted, taboo-busting drama"

"One of the most poignant and affectingly controversial British movies of the year"