The British drama ‘The Mother’, directed by Roger Michell from a script by Hanif Kureishi and starring Anne Reid in the main role as May, really got to me.
‘The Mother’ had the perfect formula for drama. We have a meaty central character, a challenging journey, and some quirky and telling choices.
Talented British actress Reid must have felt over the moon when she landed the feature role. Female roles this strong don’t come up that often.
May is a woman in her sixties who finds herself suddenly widowed when her husband dies of heart failure. From the first scenes we see that May is very much her own person, willful and uncompromising.

Grandmother May chooses to get away from her marital home. May doesn’t stay at her son Bobby’s family home when she realizes that her presence is causing dislocation within his family.
She shacks up at her daughters Paula’s home and has to cope with her daughters’ decision to have it out with her over what she believes is the ill treatment she received as a child.
Paula runs a local writer’s group. It isn’t long before she is trying to match-make her mother with some of the older men in her group. What she doesn’t realise is that her mother finds these men boring and uninteresting. More to the point, she is unaware that her mum has her eye on her builder boyfriend, the phlegmatic Darren. May has felt her sexuality reawaken after being somewhat numbed by years of neglect in her marriage.

I guess that’s enough of a preview! For sure, ‘The Mother’ won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. For me it worked on an elemental level. This film was an original, gutsy survivor’s story.