Mothering Sunday
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: November 19, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
66
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 30 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
12
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinJennie PunterApr 11, 2022
Mothering Sunday, which unfolds on one day in the 1920s English countryside, is an exquisite expression of the female gaze that sifts through the memories, reveries, and revelations of a writer and explores—in a story that captures “the whole feeling of life,” as one character puts it— how she became one. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 28, 2022
Mothering Sunday is most likely a one-of-a-kind hybrid, a brilliant one-off. Read full review
90
Screen DailyWendy IdeJul 11, 2021
It’s a richly detailed mosaic of a movie which pays as much attention to emotional authenticity – a dull ache of grief which is the aftermath of the First World War and a smouldering yearning between the two lovers – as it does to the story itself. Read full review
83
The Film StageJared MobarakSep 11, 2021
Husson leads us through tiny moments building up an origin story of sorts for who Jane will become. These experiences and these observations become the basis of a book about life’s beauty and tragedy binding us in ways that transcend economic and social standing. Read full review
83
The PlaylistCaroline TsaiJul 11, 2021
A thoughtful if occasionally melodramatic reflection on the nature of grief. Read full review
80
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Anne T. DonahueApr 6, 2022
Triumphantly, Young’s work with her ever-changing (and aging) character succeeds in bringing a complicated and resilient character to life. Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeNov 14, 2021
It’s the more deceptively restrained and poetic elements that strike home. Read full review
80
Time OutAnna SmithNov 4, 2021
Mothering Sunday isn’t exactly a cheery watch, but it’s an intelligent, affecting British drama with a splash of French sensuality. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyJul 11, 2021
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. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleSteve DavisApr 6, 2022
While the movie’s nonlinear construction is its selling point, at least for those moviegoers who prefer a bit of a challenge, an underlying vibe of melancholy gives Mothering Sunday thematic weight. Read full review
75
Paste MagazineBrianna ZiglerMar 23, 2022
While countered by a throughline which is a bit on-the-nose—that loss comes for us all, and that what matters is how we choose to live with it—Mothering Sunday still succeeds as a moving, beautifully crafted and sensual period picture. Read full review
70
VarietyGuy LodgeJul 11, 2021
Telling a story that advocates living boldly over not living at all, Husson has followed suit, opening up exciting new possibilities for her career in the process. Read full review
67
ColliderMaggie LovittApr 8, 2022
It’s not that Mothering Sunday is a bad film, it’s far from it, but it never reaches the echelons of true greatness that it should have been able to achieve with such a who’s who cast. Read full review
67
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 9, 2021
Mothering Sunday pushes toward cut-and-dried conclusions, sewing up certain storylines with a finality that doesn’t befit the early sense that nothing is really ever over for Jane or the wounded world she inhabits. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 5, 2022
Whatever Mothering Sunday lacks in emotional payoffs, it’s the shattered tone that Husson gets across that makes it work. Few films have done as well at capturing the disorienting, utterly-deflating feeling of a grief everyone involved realizes they will never, ever get over, so there’s no sense even trying to talk about it. Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comKatie RifeMar 25, 2022
On an intuitive, sensual level, “Mothering Sunday” is intoxicating. As a story with plot and characters, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliMar 23, 2022
Beautifully filmed and emotionally on-target when confined to 1924, Mothering Sunday loses its way once unmoored in time and left adrift on the currents of the years to come. Read full review
63
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckMar 22, 2022
Memory is selective, memory is jumbled, memory travels in different directions. And so does “Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson’s affecting and visually pleasing — if languorous — meditation on love and loss, based on a woman’s memory of an impactful day that reverberates through her long life. Read full review
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