Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 2003
The Mother (2003 film)
Buy The Mother (2003 film) now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'The Mother' is a 2003 British drama film directed by Roger Michell.
Plot
May (played by Anne Reid) is a woman from Northern England. Her life has been constrained by the expectations of society and her husband. When her husband dies during a visit to their adult children in London, she has a chance to start again and pursue her love of drawing.
May is quiet but when her son Bobby tries to make her sit down and have a cup of tea she refuses, saying she might never get up and that she won't become invisible like all the neighbouring grandmothers and widows. May returns to London with Bobby to the horror of Helen, Bobby's wife.
May initiates a sexual affair with Darren (Daniel Craig), a warm and attractive younger man who is renovating Bobby and Helen's house and who is also her daughter Paula's boyfriend. Paula says he is a sweet man but weak. He has a wife and autistic son but lives in his van outside their house. Darren appears to share May's interest in art and the unlikely pair form an understanding.
May moves from Bobby's house to Paula's and discovers Paula is having therapy because her mother didn't cuddle her enough. At a writing group organised by Paula, May writes a short account of being a depressed mother of two young children. It is a very public explanation, perhaps, for her lack of affection. Paula introduces her mother to Bruce, a man near May's age. Paula wants her mother to find out if Darren will leave his wife and what he thinks of her. May agrees, but can only avoid Paula's later questions.
Paula stumbles upon a sketchbook filled with May's drawings of a naked man and a woman performing fellatio on him. She surmises the man is Darren, and shows the sketches to Bobby. He says it must be a fantasy but Paula suspects her mother is having an affair with Darren, and is angry.
After sex with May, Darren helps himself to medication in Helen's bathroom cabinet without caring what they are. May offers to pay for him to travel, with her, but then seeing his reluctant response says, 'what a silly idea'.
Paula invites her mother and Bruce on a double date with herself and Darren. May leaves when Paula makes a show of kissing Darren, and Bruce pursues her. He takes her home and coerces her into having sex that she doesn't want or enjoy. May goes to Paula's but finds no comfort as Paula is pleased to think her mother and Bruce were probably intimate. Paula tells May that she has given Darren an ultimatum to leave his wife by the following day, and, expecting that he will, tells May that she must leave.
Bobby tells Darren he must finish the conservatory or leave as he has a deadline and wants to sell the house. Darren is disillusioned and frustrated by his life and his lack of autonomy and fights with May, seeking to assert himself by making May perform fellatio on him. May wants to please Darren but is reluctant because he is being rough and aggressive. Things only become worse when May reveals that the financial "help" she had earlier promised him would be a plane ticket, to allow them to travel together, rather than cash as he had been anticipating. Darren loses his temper and insults her, before proceeding to smash up the conservatory he had been working on for Bobby.
Later, Paula tells her mother that what might make her feel better would be to hit her. May agrees and Paula punches May in the face. They visit Bobby's house where Helen is showing an estate agent round, and Darren is busy repairing the conservatory with Bobby. May has a black eye that she explains as an argument and says she 'got the message', before saying goodbye to everyone, refusing a lift to the station and preferring to leave alone.
May returns home, but only long enough to collect her passport, before walking away with her suitcase, sketchbooks and passport in hand.
Cast
* Anne Reid May, Bobby and Paula's mother, Toots' widow
* Daniel Craig Darren, Bobby's friend and Paula's lover, a skilled carpenter
* Peter Vaughan Toots, May's husband and Bobby and Paula's father
* Danira Govi - Au Pair
* Steven Mackintosh Bobby, son of May and Toots, and brother to Paula
* Cathryn Bradshaw Paula, daughter of May and Toots, and sister to Bobby
* Anna Wilson-Jones Helen, Bobby's wife
* Oliver Ford Davies - Bruce, an older man, May's date
* Harry Michell Harry, Bobby and Helen's son
* Rosie Michell Rosie, Bobby and Helen's daughter
Production
Anne Reid revealed that she was so terrified at the prospect of filming sex scenes with Daniel Craig that she got drunk and then burst into tears.
Awards and honours
Wins
* 2004 London Critics Circle Film Awards: ALFS Award - Anne Reid
Nominations
* 2004 BAFTA Awards: BAFTA Film Award - Anne Reid
* 2004 British Independent Film Award - Anne Reid
* 2004 Cinemanila International Film Festival
: Lino Brocka Award - Roger Michell
* European Film Awards
: 2004 Audience Award - Daniel Craig and Anne Reid
: 2003 European Film Award - Anne Reid and Hanif Kureishi
* 2004 London Critics Circle Film Awards
: ALFS Award - Daniel Craig, Hanif Kureishi, Film of the Year
* 2004 Shanghai International Film Festival
: Golden Goblet - Roger Michell
References
Buy The Mother (2003 film) now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 2003