The Mother

May loses her husband and does not want to return alone to the house in the country. She stays at her son's place in London. The house is crowded, nobody has time for her, and everyone treats her as a problem. Darren, her daughter's boyfriend, is doing building work there. May starts talking to him and the relationship goes somewhere else. The subject is not love but a woman in her sixties having her desire met with disgust by the people around her. The children's reaction is not moral but physical; the idea that their mother could want such a thing is unbearable to them. The film says so to their faces. The form is cool and distanced. Roger Michell does not underscore the emotional scenes with music and does not romanticise the sex; the gaze stays neutral, and the discomfort comes from there. The screenplay is by Hanif Kureishi, a writer known for handling this kind of material without detours, and the text protects nobody: May is selfish, her children are cold, Darren is unreliable. Anne Reid plays May and Daniel Craig plays Darren, at a time when he was not yet widely known. The film screened in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes in 2003. Who it is for: viewers who like British independent drama and uncomfortable character studies. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic character; nobody behaves well here.