Mothering Sunday: A Writer’s Life Filtered through the Female Gaze
By Jennie Punter
Rating: A
Mothering Sunday, which unfolds on one day in the 1920s English countryside, is an exquisite expression of the female gaze that sifts through the memories, reveries, and revelations of a writer and explores—in a story that captures “the whole feeling of life,” as one character puts it— how she became one.
The English-language debut of director Eva Husson (TIFF 2015 Platform selection Bang Gang), Mothering Sunday is anchored in the nuanced screenplay written by Alice Birch (Lady Macbeth, HBO’s Succession), which is an adaptation of British author Graham Swift’s award-winning 2016 novel of the same name.
Forbidden lovers Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) and Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor) in Mothering Sunday.
Morgan Kibby’s entrancing score music, which is often reminiscent of Debussy’s well known symphonic poem Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, strongly evokes the visual and emotional tenor of the film: awakening, sensuality, solitude, the space between dreaming and waking, a sound-world that is neither sad (minor) nor happy (major).
The film engages the viewer’s imagination much like an effective short story does. Opening with a dreamy fragment of a childhood memory from “once upon a time before the boys were killed” (i.e. the First World War), we see a word being typed on a manual typewriter: “it.”
“It” is the secret, so to speak, that the central character has been keeping: the events and connected experiences of a particular day in her young life—March 30, 1924, that year's Mothering Sunday.
She has revisited this day throughout her writer’s life, turning it into a sort of memory palace where other significant scenes from her life are kept, as well as scenes she imagined might have happened that day. We understand that “it” is both the wellspring the writer draws from and the story she may never tell.
While the film does follow the chronological path of the day, there are brief but frequent side excursions to the recent past and more distant future. This creates a kind of stream of consciousness experience that never feels disorienting—as long as you go with the flow.
For those not acquainted with the primarily British term, Mothering Sunday is a Christian observance dating back to the Middle Ages which became popular again in the U.K. in the early 20th century as a day (specifically, the fourth Sunday in Lent) to honour and visit one’s mother, as well as the church in which one was baptized.
Mothering Sunday, both the book and film, centers on the experience of 22-year-old Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), who works as a maid at an upper-class household and is also an orphan, both of which make her an “occupational observer of life.”
Without a mother to visit on March 30, 1924, Jane plans to remain at the estate and read while the other servants visit their mothers. Her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), spend the day at a picnic with their neighbours, the Sheringhams.
But a phone call from Paul (Josh O’Connor), the Sheringhams’ youngest son and her secret lover, changes her plan, and she bicycles to the manor house where he lives. “We’ve not met like this before,” he says coyly, opening the door. Upstairs in his chambers they engage in probing, flirtatious banter. They undress and make love with familiarity, fondness, and passion, lingering for a spell as they casually acknowledge that this may be the last time they are together.
Paul is engaged to marry Emma (Emma D’Arcy), the daughter of family friends. She is currently waiting for him to arrive at the picnic attended by his parents and the Nivens. He is running late.
As they avoid getting dressed, Jane makes up a story for Paul about Emma coming to the house, seeing the bicycle outside, slipping out of her shoes, and then catching them in the act. As Jane speaks the story aloud, the camera reveals her middle-aged self reading it to Donald (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), a philosopher and, we soon learn, Jane’s husband.
Intercut with glimpses of Jane’s past with Paul and future with Donald, this Mothering Sunday encounter and parting of lover-friends feels both momentous and ordinary.
Filmed during the early months of pandemic lockdowns in 2020, Mothering Sunday is deeply imbued with quiet grief. The Nivens have lost both their children in the war, which also claimed both of Paul’s brothers. The parents are numb, going through the motions of familiar social gatherings that bring no joy and remind them only of profound loss.
As the housemaid who is destined to become a successful writer, Odessa Young carries the film (Glenda Jackson has a small role as the oldest Jane) and conveys the character's intelligence, passion, and self control through her physicality and her eyes.
I have not seen O’Connor’s portrayal of Prince Charles in the popular series The Crown, and perhaps never will so as not to alter my memory of his wonderful performance in this film. Not surprisingly, Firth and Colman expertly handle some of the heavy emotional lifting in their supporting performances.
“You can describe it, claim it, reword it and reimagine it for me, can’t you Jane?” Paul says, recalling a childhood memory as he steels himself for the road ahead. He knows what Jane Fairchild will become, and how enjoyable it is to witness in the tantalizingly eloquent Mothering Sunday.
Mothering Sunday opens April 8, 2022, in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal theatres, and in other cities throughout the spring. The film is directed by Eva Husson, written by Alice Birch based on the novel by Graham Swift, and stars Josh O’Connor, Odessa Young, Glenda Jackson, Olivia Colman, Colin Firth, and Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù.