Recensioni de* critic*

["Mothering Sunday"] opens a door to the depths of our souls, reminding us we aren’t alone.

Some viewers might feel a sense of whiplash as the filmmaker slides between time and place at whim, but the strength of the film’s emotion and talented cast (Young is joined by a murderer’s row of stars, including Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Olivia Colman, and Emma D’Arcy) help ground it.

“Mothering Sunday” suggests a stray tendril of “Downton Abbey” expanded to feature length, splintered into three time frames and then funneled, with much loud banging of typewriter keys, into the origin story of a great literary mind. It never quite comes together... but Husson’s skill with actors, among them Colin Firth, Olivia Colman, Sope Dìrísù and the great Glenda Jackson, yields undeniable dividends.

There’s so much distinction here, and maybe just a slight vagueness about theme as Husson nears the finish line: it’s a tough ask to end a film well which is so given over to memory, and this becomes a bit of a waft in the general direction of closure.

The director moves fluidly between the time periods, helped by a transcendent score from Morgan Kibby... Firth and Colman offer beautifully contrasting studies in grief. He is benign yet defeated, she bitter and full of rage. It’s the best film I’ve seen at Cannes this year.

It is a lovely-looking, lovely-sounding movie, handsomely designed, meticulously shot and impeccably performed — and it also has interesting things to say about the emotional toughness and the Greeneian splinter of ice in the heart, that is needed by a writer. But I have to admit that, despite my liking for slow cinema, I found something a bit indulgent and classy about the unvarying andante pace.

Husson’s attempt to reinvent the language of British period cinema in predominantly sensual terms is hit and miss, yielding some passages of vivid, tactile clarity and others of fussy affectation.

Is there a director who has been better over the last decade at shooting naked bodies and portraying sex than Husson? Both Young and O'Connor deliver natural performances, showing love through physicality and emotion as they find liberation in a rare moment where they can walk around naked in each other's company without fear of reprisal.

The presence of Olivia Colman and Colin Firth in supporting roles cements the film’s status as a prestige period picture, but the flighty non-linear structure brings a spark of unconventional spirit which chimes beautifully with that of the central character. Audiences will likely be seduced by the combination of Brit star power and the unapologetic steaminess of the central relationship.

[A] sensual but structurally flawed period drama... even the lush world-building of the visuals here, committed performances especially from Young, and stream-of-consciousness editing aren’t enough to conjure the wry, melancholy, and, above all, intensely literary interior voice of the book’s protagonist. It’s that distinctive voice, expressed through an adroit use of free indirect style, that earned the original work acclaim — not the bare-bones plot, which, when rendered down to its essence, is basically straight-up melodrama.