Film Review: Mothering Sunday
Images courtesy of Transmission Films.
Set against the backdrop of post-World War I England, Mothering Sunday is an intimate and sensual love story. However, unlike the sort of lustful relationships found in bodice-ripping romance novels, it explores the pain and grief that love can inflict on its victims. The heroine of the story, Jane Fairchild (Young), is no stranger to grief, having been orphaned at birth, with this lowborn status forcing her into service as a maid at the Niven’s country estate.
Jane shares many similarities with Jane Austen’s female protagonists – she’s aspirational, intelligent, and willing to question the social status quo. However, her low social status means eligible gentlemen do not deem her worthy of marriage. Therefore when she finds love in a secret relationship with neighbouring scion Paul Sheringham (O’Connor), she’s overjoyed.
Much like a teenager climbing out a window to see her crush, Jane is introduced arranging a sultry dalliance over the phone before sneaking out to see Paul with giddy excitement. Falling into each other’s arms, they smile, flirt, and make love. While these scenes contain full-frontal nudity, they don’t feel voyeuristic or overly sexualised. Instead, director Eva Husson emphasises the intimacy of Jane and Paul’s secret meetings, which is the only time the two are unencumbered by social judgement and free to express their feelings for one another. These moments, which are buoyed by the effortless chemistry between Odessa Young and Josh O’Connor, are indicative of the bittersweet undertone of the film. Characters are only able to enjoy fleeting moments of happiness before being dragged back to their damaged realities. The couple’s dream is shattered when Paul reveals he is late for lunch with his fiancé. Their love is not strong enough to defy social expectations, and Jane is left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.
The macabre setting of an affluent but wounded post-war England serves as an apt battleground for the war between grief and love. Gorgeous manor houses and lakeside marquees are juxtaposed with the miserable people in them, with parents still mourning the deaths of their children who fought in the war. In traditional British style, Mr Niven (Firth) insists on ‘keeping calm and carrying on’ in public, but Mrs Niven (Colman) is unable to contain her grief at social outings. This inability to truly express one’s feelings due to social expectations creates parallels between Jane and the Nivens; they must suppress their love for those they have lost, while Jane must suppress her love for Paul.
As with other period pieces, many of Jane’s interactions with other characters explore the lack of empathy between social classes. While the Nivens are friendly to Jane, seeing her as something of a surrogate daughter, at one stage a distraught Mrs Niven exclaims how “fortunate” Jane is to be an orphan, as she “has nothing left to lose.” While true, this tone deaf assertion serves as further proof that Jane lives in a different world to Paul, and therefore the couple are doomed to acquiesce to the constraints of a class-based society.
Husson leans into the inherent sadness of the film by using breathtaking long shots between scenes, complemented by Morgan Kibby’s entrancing score. And while this meticulous cinematography may be criticised as style over substance, I believe it underlines the introspective nature of Jane’s journey.
More intimate, sensual and depressing than a whimsical period drama, Mothering Sunday is a breath of fresh air in a typically repetitive genre.
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Mothering Sunday is screening in cinemas from Thursday the 2nd of June. For tickets and more info, click here.