Mothering Sunday is a day no one will forget

Based on Graham Swift’s 2016 novel, the English-language debut of French director Eva Husson largely takes place over the course of a day, the eponymous Mothering Sunday. The crux of the film, and the significance of that particularly celebration, is that, having lost them in the Great War, so many mothers have so few sons. Our heroine, Jane Fairchild, played with forthright energy and conviction by Odessa Young has an equal and opposite problem. She has no mother.

Woven into this central conceit is a masterful study of grief, as the Fairchild’s love affair with Josh O’Conner’s wistful Paul Sheringham is contrasted with the Niven family sleepwalking through the rest of their lives, after their boys have been lost to conflict. Colin Firth and Olivia Colman give small, but faultless, portraits of a couple destroyed by the deaths of their sons, setting the tone of a film that unhurriedly works its way toward a conclusion that is as devastating as it is unexpected.

The film’s cast is handsomely dressed by Sandy Powell, there’s a superb score by Morgan Kirby, and even the return of Glenda Jackson to the screen after thirty years. Those coming to the movie through their affection for costume dramas such as Downton Abbey will be rewarded, but should brace themselves for a far darker ride.