Mothering Sunday

Date: 26/04/2022 Times: 7:30 pm - 9:15 pm

This film is based on a novel by the Booker prizewinner, Graham Swift. The book focuses on one day in the life of the protagonist but Alice Birch, who writes the screenplay opens it up to include episodes from her future life.

On a warm spring day in 1924, house maid and foundling Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) finds herself alone on Mother’s Day. Her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), are out and she has the rare chance to spend quality time with her secret lover. Paul (Josh O’Connor) is the boy from the manor house nearby, Jane’s long-term love despite the fact that he’s engaged to be married to another woman, a childhood friend and daughter of his parents’ friends. But events that neither can foresee will change the course of Jane’s life forever.

Perhaps the most affecting strand of the film sees the undertow of grief in post-World War I Britain, economically but beautifully evoked by the likes of Colin Firth and especially Olivia Colman. “You have nothing to lose and never shall,” she tells the orphaned Jane. The palpable parental bereavement makes the live-life-while-you-can philosophy of the youngsters all the more understandable.

(114 seats remaining)

Venue: William Loveless Hall