Picture of the movie Mothering Sunday © CHANNEL FOUR TELEVISION CORPORATION, THE BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE AND NUMBER 9 FILMS SUNDAY LIMITED 2021
Mothering Sunday: love out of sight
After treating us to Girls of the Sun in Competition in 2018, director Eva Husson is back with a new film selected for Cannes Première: Mothering Sunday, an intimate ode to secret carnal love in the 1940s.
Known for her first film The Young Lady and for her series adaptation of Normal People, playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch brings us her adaptation of a novel by Graham Swift. French filmmaker Eva Husson, who had already tackled the pleasures of the flesh with her 2016 film Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story) continues in the same vein with Mothering Sunday, the story of two lovers in the inter-war period.
Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is an orphaned servant turned writer who looks back on Mother's Day in 1924, when she met with Paul (Josh O’Connor), her neighbour and lover, when his employers Mr and Mrs Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman) were out for the day. Engaged to another woman, Paul indulges in his secret idyll with Jane in the cosy cocoon of the house. Their bodies come together in a tender portrait of vulnerability, as their feelings and memories rise to the surface.
Shot in the throes of the pandemic in full compliance with sanitary measures, Mothering Sunday is a slice of romance offered up in a time marked by loss and grief. Flashbacks and glimpses of other times are layered over the here and now of the couple's embrace, a timeline made up of dreams and memories. Eva Husson films as close as possible to her actors, capturing the sensuality between two people whose love conquers all, drawing the audience into their secret world built for two.
