With most of my favorite TV shows on summer vacation, I have to find SOMETHING to write about, no?Sure, I’ll throw in the occasional summer blockbuster review here and there, but I can’t see everything in theatres (insert obligatory "especially in THIS economy" statement). Besides, that would only lead to two or three posts a month. I enjoyed taking last week off from writing in my blog (you didn’t even notice, did you?!) but I don’t want to get too used to not writing.
Thankfully (as is usually the case) my girlfriend Erica came home with the solution.
She recently started work at our local library and (or some reason) she’s become obsessed with checking out an ungodly amount of books and movies. She CANNOT stop. The only thing weirder than checking out eight books that she can’t possibly read in two weeks is the delightfully random nature of her movie picks.
That’s why I’ve decided to introduce the clumsily titled "Why Erica? Why?" Summer Movie Library Series. It’s named in honor of my reaction every single time she brings a bundle of movies home. It’s not that they’re necessarily good or bad - it’s just, well, "why?"
(Of course, we could’ve been checking movies out with our library cards all this time, but this inexplicably only became a thing once Erica started working there. Ah summer.)
The first movie on the list was "The Mother", a 2003 drama that was also the first feature film funded entirely by the BBC.
Anne Reid (in a bold, expert performance) stars as May who, along with her husband Toots (Peter Vaughan), is visiting her grown children (Cathryn Bradshaw and Steven Mackintosh) and small grandchildren in busy London when tragedy strikes. May ends up forging a connection with Darren (Daniel Craig), a handyman who is also in a relationship with May’s daughter Paula.
To me, the movie is at its most effective when it’s depicting the isolation and grief May experiences. The movie touches on (without harping on) the cruel way grown children discard and disregard their parents when they get to an advanced age. There’s an interesting movie to be made about the fascinating shift in the parent-child dynamic when the child actually becomes more capable of protecting and providing for the parent, but this isn’t really that movie. (Working title of that movie: "It Sucks To Get Old.")
Nope, this is a movie about James Bond having sex with a woman who’s almost 70 years old.
Ok, it’s not exactly about that. May DOES experience a reawakening after she bonds (see what I did there) with Craig’s character and becomes her own woman instead of just being somebody’s wife or her kids’ "mother". Thankfully, the movie avoids any obvious clichés that usually come when a character "busts loose." (May doesn’t get a new car and there’s no shopping montage.)
The two actors completely sold the relationship for me because each person’s motivation was clearly drawn out. Craig, in particular, does an excellent job of showing us what a magnetic, attractive total disaster of a man Darren is.
Obviously, this leads to friction between May and her daughter Paula. To me, this was the least interesting part of the movie (particularly since it culminates in the movie’s most ridiculous moment). I was much more interested in earlier, tenser scenes in which Paula (who is kind of a wreck herself) and May talked about the reasons Paula resented her mother.
Overall, this was a mostly realistic (the odd moments tended to stick out like a sore thumb) and honest movie about a downer of a subject featuring mostly unlikable characters. Fortunately, the story is handled with skill (director Roger Michell throw in some welcome stylistic flourishes) and a dash of humor. I still sort of wish the movie had spent more time on either May’s grief and isolation or the idea of lust (for life AND hunky handymen) at an advanced age instead of somewhat splitting the difference.
If that doesn’t do it for you, then I suppose you can check it out if you want to see James Bond have sex with a senior citizen.
The Mother...B
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