Review: 'Mothering Sunday' is a sensual, sensitive tale of a woman channeling love and grief into writing

Love, lust and grief mix freely in director Eva Husson’s “Mothering Sunday,” which is simultaneously thoughtful and sensual in its telling of a writer’s recollections of her youthful and not-so-youthful romances.

It’s 1924 on an English estate, and Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is looking forward to her day off. Jane works as a maid for the Nevins, Sir Godfrey (Colin Firth) and Clarrie (Olivia Colman), and they’re spending this day — the equivalent of Mother’s Day — with friends at another noble house. The Nevins will be toasting the upcoming wedding of two children of family friends: Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor) and Emma Hobday (Emma D’Arcy).

Jane will be spending her day at the Sheringham’s estate, for a rendezvous with Paul, for sex and cigarettes, just days before he’s scheduled to marry Emma. For Paul, his marriage to Emma is an obligation, something to please his parents, like his plans to become a lawyer. Emma was intended to marry the Nevins’ son, James — but he was killed in the Great War, as was Paul’s two brothers.

The screenplay by Alice Burch (who wrote the Florence Pugh drama “Lady Macbeth”), adapting Graham Swift’s novel, is at its best when Jane, an orphan, briefly considers the life of luxury she witnesses in the Nevins’ and Sheringham’s homes. A fair portion of the story happens after Paul leaves Jane for the luncheon party with Emma and the Nevins — as Jane explores the Sheringhams’ opulent home, from its library to the kitchen, fully nude.

The scenes from 1924 are intercut with two other timelines. One features a slightly older Jane working in a bookshop and starting out as a novelist, married to Daniel (Sope Dirisu), a writer of philosophy. The other shows a much older Jane — played by the legendary Glenda Jackson, who’s 85 now and still a steely presence.

Husson and Birch explore the dividing lines between love and lust, working-class and idly rich, and how the specter of death cuts through those divisions. They also, through Young’s quietly moving performance, show how a writer processes all of those emotions, turning every part of their lives into words on a page.

“Mothering Sunday” doesn’t always work — the scenes not set in 1924 tend to drag the rest of the story down a bit — but when it does, when Jane tiptoes naked through a manor house to gather every sensation she can, the movie achieves a graceful kind of power.

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‘Mothering Sunday’

★★★

Opens Friday, April 8, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas. Rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity and some language. Running time: 104 minutes.