Based on the 2016 novel, Mothering Sunday follows Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) works as a maid for the Nivens family (Olivia Colman and Colin Firth), a couple who lost their sons on the battlefields of World War I. Jane is having a secret affair with Paul (Josh O’Connor), a soon to be lawyer and son of the Nivens’ neighbors and close friends the Sheringhams. On Mothering Sunday, her day off, Jane has one final tryst with Paul Emma at his house while his parents are away and before he goes off to marry Emma (Emma D’Arcy). There is a sense of quiet idyll to their stolen hours of lovemaking and Jane’s gentle exploration of this world of wealth and prestige.
The path of Jane’s life and her relationship with Paul serves as an exploration of two of the film’s themes, the weight of socioeconomic expectations and limitation. The two are very much in love and enjoy a deep connection, but Paul is compelled by the social mores of the day that dictate his obligation to marry a female peer who also descends from privilege that will keep up appearances and allow his upper class lineage to persist. As such, Jane is forced to watch the object of her affection leave her to continue to serve the wealthy as a maid while he goes off to build a dream life and she must retreat to her writing in order to imagine one of her own. The loss of Paul to his duties as a wealthy young man compound the loss she has already suffered as an orphan, which Mrs. Niven inconsiderately alludes to in a scene where she calls Jane lucky for having been bereaved at birth, now with nothing to lose, having no clue of her entanglement with Paul and the impending grief of their doomed love affair.
The lasting toll of grief serves as Mothering Sunday’s emotional throughline, one that effects all of its characters to a varying degree, with The Great War serving as the impetus in many cases. It is most evident with Mrs. Nevin and her obvious anguish and detachment at having lost her sons to the war, portrayed impactfully by Colman. It is the loss of Paul’s two brothers and his other peers in the war that adds greater pressure on him to “do the right thing” and marry Emma despite his caring for a young woman of a lesser station in life. For Jane, she carries her grief throughout her lifetime, as we meet her in various stages of life, each affected by what she has lost in her past, whether it be her parents or another beloved individual. The lesson here is what grieving drives us to do in our lives, or not do, as we are left to pick up the pieces left behind. Grief may leave us with responsibility or take from us the will to press on in the face of our pain, but its indelible effect on our lives is something cannot be overstated. Mothering Sunday subtly makes this point through the experiences of its characters.
The film is well directed considering the multiple timelines it juggles effectively, a testament to the work done by Eva Husson in the director’s chair. Odessa Young does a fine job as the film’s lead, but even in her small role, Olivia Colman makes the absolute best of her little screen time powerfully portraying a mother beset by grief and struggling to keep moving forward. The flash forward scenes of Jane as woman in her prime working toward building herself as an author sometimes feels as if it’s pulling you away from the more interesting story, but it packs an emotional punch of its own as the subplot develops. All in all, it’s an interesting story and look at one woman’s lifelong dance with grief and how it affected her and those around her.
Image: Lionsgate
