Told across the lifetime of Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), Mothering Sunday is a romantic drama that covers the life of the house servant, bookworm turned bookshop clerk, turned author and her various loves. In the wake of World War I, she serves at the Niven estate and begins an affair with the wealthy neighbor and last remaining son of the Sheringham’s, Paul (Josh O’Connor). To be wed to someone else, it is not to last, and Jane eventually meets Donald (Sope Dirisu) while working at the bookshop, a new flame that will provide her comfort through her middle years. 

Directed by Eva Husson from a script penned by Alice Birch based off of Graham Swift’s novel, Sony Pictures Classics released the stately romantic period drama. While the story on paper has a nice arc to it, the product on screen is very stilted and hard to break in to. The estate house sets, despite their lavish decoration, lack any real personality which blends well with the bland chemistry and performances by the cast. It is made even worse because the film greatly underutilizes its talent, especially in its supporting cast including Colin Firth and Olivia Colman. 

The central romance between Jane and Paul feels incredibly dull and uninteresting which keeps audiences away from falling into what is supposed to be a steamy and sweeping romance that drives the film. Despite their almost constant nudity together before and after their clandestine encounters, neither of the two seem that particularly enthralled with each other. Maybe it is because this love has an expiration date already attached to it when Paul marries Emma (Emma D’Arcy), but the performance does not match that importance especially when the script sets this up a formative experience for Jane. Further, much of this era of the film is spent after their last rendezvous when Paul leaves Jane alone in the house where she wanders from room to room, naked and in solitude.  

In the second era of the film, Jane is working at a local bookshop when she meets Donald, a philosophical man with a penchant for the German thinkers. We see their life in fragments, but it is here where the film actually begins to build interest because Jane and Donald, unlike with Paul, have chemistry on screen. Possibly this is because they are in a more mature stage of their lives, but more so it is because there is a story here. Jane and Paul were purely physical, whereas Donald seems to have things in common with Jane as they discuss literature, their lives, and their careers. Young is able to deliver a performance in this middle section as her character has finally started to take shape and become something. She does fine enough in the first section, but the script pays her no favors in terms of development or drive. Dirisu also brings a very warm presence to the film in his portrayal which eases us even more into this fractured middle segment. The film is smart enough to show the writing process as not just Jane fighting writer’s block in front of a typewriter in a sunlit study, but rather opts to have the couple talk through the basic plot details of her new novel, the publisher’s looming deadlines, and even feelings of inadequacy to deliver the caliber project expected from her. It is all very interesting, and the scenes are quite engaging even if they only account for an unfortunately short part of the 104-minute runtime.  

Overall, Mothering Sunday is unnecessarily complicated with its convoluted, decades-spanning framing device. Other than portioning out details, it seems a strange choice on the page as there are not even small details of Jane’s time with Paul that help to add context to her time with Donald. There are some moments of interest sprinkled throughout which quickly get ignored to find Jane on her own. The lazy performances across the board – apart from Dirisu – keep us at arm’s length from entering an already impenetrable story. While the music, lighting, and camera movement create a dreamy atmosphere, it becomes a struggle not to fall asleep ourselves as the thin narrative slowly unfolds, revealing ultimately nothing at its end.