Rent The Mother (2003)

Family problems - The Mother review by CP Customer

Not easy to watch, but an excellent cast and good script makes it worth. Once again it confirms there was a life before 007 for Daniel Craig who is involved with a dysfunctional family. He has an affair with mother AND daughter. The moral is live your life now.

A provocative & interesting film, but filled with horrible & unsympathetic characters - The Mother review by TB

In a world where, once you reach a certain age (especially older women,) there are almost no films starring or made about you, The Mother was a welcome & startling revelation. Back in 2003 when it was released (I reference the year deliberately as this was before Daniel Craig was cast as James Bond/well-known,) it started a heated and much needed debate about how we as a society treat & represent the older generation. It was also a film which clearly & compassionately showed that just because people age, doesn't mean that they don't also want & need love and affection.

The central premise is a good one: a husband & wife go to see their grown-up children in London. They are treated as outsiders & ignored/ostracized. Whilst staying with their family, the husband dies suddenly & the wife/mother May is left rudderless and adrift. She tries to return home but cannot face the empty house or memories, so ends up coming back & staying with first her son then her daughter where she becomes an inconvenience which they cannot manage or deal with. The only person who starts to show any kindness or concern towards her is Darren, the builder in her son's home, who is also in the middle of a messy divorce and sleeping with May's daughter. This then turns into an affair between Darren & May, who are effectively 2 lost souls looking for meaning.

The best parts of this film are far and away the scenes between Darren & May. Daniel Craig and Anne Reid have the kind of chemistry which, if it didn't work, would mean the film would totally & utterly fail. The acting here is stripped back & completely naturalistic, and the moments with Darren & May alone work perfectly. Even though there is the much-talked about age gap, this works so well in conveying the difference the two characters have and the experiences they have both had and will be having as they grow older. The isolation that they also both experience, May in her older and now single life; Darren in how he cannot keep himself from repeatedly going off the rails with the litany of poor decisions he makes.

Unfortunately, the film also has some very big & serious issues with it, the most obvious one being just how unbelievably unsympathetic & horrible some of the characters are. These affect not only the smaller parts (the daughter-in-law is pretty much a spoilt narcissist who is shown as shallow & only interested in spending all of her husband's wealth on creating failing clothing shops,) through to May's daughter Paula.

Paula should, given the fact that her mother basically steals her boyfriend & has an affair with him, be someone who you feel intense sympathy for and relate to. But she is written as a screeching, angsty and extremely immature woman who, every time she goes off on a rant, makes you wonder how on earth she could function as an adult or indeed even be a teacher/support children. I absolutely detested her. There are several nails down a chalkboard moments, which add to this feeling, such as when she makes Darren keep reading something she has written, for no other reason than to keep the attention on her, even though you can see he would rather be anywhere else than there. It is intimated that this is partly due to childhood trauma, but I also felt that this reason was basically doing a lot of heavy lifting for her horrible personality.

The other massive flaw with the film was that when the affair is discovered, which was obviously going to happen, it is done in the most stupid & far-fetched way. This actually in one sense ruins the whole story, because the events shown are so ridiculous, it stretches credibility. Separately, on a technical level, there is a cut during the climatic scene which is so obvious, it draws attention to the film editing & ruins everything that was building up to that moment.

To summarise, somewhere in here is a great film with an important message, but a flawed script & some questionable choices leave much to desired.