Mothering Sunday

Showtimes April 11 - 14:

Jan (Young) works as a maid for the Nivens (Colman and Firth), a couple who, like so many other families, lost their sons on the battlefields of the First World War. Jane is having a secret affair with Paul (O’Connor), son of the Nivens’ neighbors. Paul is the only member of his peer group to return from the front, a status that has left him with a powerful dose of survivor’s guilt and a weighty sense of duty to his family, who expects him to pursue a legal career and marry a woman of his station – which is to say, not the likes of Jane.

On Mother’s Day, her day off, Jane trysts with Paul at his house while his parents are away. There is a sense of quiet idyll to their stolen hours and to Jane’s gentle exploration of her lover’s world of wealth and prestige. Yet a double shadow hangs over their precious day, arising from the horrors of the recent past and the disappointments and sacrifices looming in the pair’s future. With storytelling that is at once impressionistic and sensual, evoking those fleeting images that linger in the memory after a moment is long gone, Mothering Sunday captures one momentous day in a woman’s life, and how its events influenced everything she did afterwards.

(UK / 2021 / Directed by Eva Husson)
R / 1 hr 44 mins