The Mother
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: May 28, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 27 Critic Reviews
Positive:
20
Mixed:
7
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Los Angeles TimesKevin Thomas
Every element of The Mother, directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi, fits together with perfection. The film's staging -- the way its settings create a world that allows for striking images that echo the psychological interplay of its people, the way in which every performance could not be any better -- is awe-inspiring. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Daring in its affirmation that a dowdy woman in her late 60s still can let go of her inhibitions and exhibit a lascivious side. Read full review
100
Dallas ObserverMelissa Levine
The first exceptional drama of 2004, The Mother feels like life itself, sharpened to its finest points. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianM. E. Russell
Powerful, subtle, quietly terrifying film about the consequences of a widow's stab at a May-December romance. Read full review
90
SlateDavid Edelstein
It's a remarkable film--one to gnaw at you and keep you up at night. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
Harsh, unsparing, unsentimental, and uniformly well-acted, The Mother bravely and intelligently tackles subject matter widely ignored in cinema--the sexuality of a plain-looking woman edging toward the twilight of a life of quiet desperation. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The Mother peers so fearlessly into the dark needs of human nature that you almost wish it would look away. It's very disturbing. Read full review
88
Miami HeraldMarta Barber
You feel terribly sad and angry at May's foolishness. Yet with so many emotions at hand, The Mother never fails to engage. Read full review
80
The New York TimesStephen Holden
The screenplay bluntly faces anxieties of aging that are rarely voiced in the movies, and it is too hard-headed to offer comfy palliatives. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Reid is stunning here. Read full review
80
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
This film holds and convinces, even evokes empathy, because of Anne Reid, an actress long experienced in British television and film. She gives May intelligence and spirit and a somewhat genteel wonder at the resurging of desire. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
Turns out to be a thoughtful, beautifully acted story about feeling alive before it's too late to feel anything. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Director Roger Michell (''Notting Hill'') conveys some of the sharpest insights into the woman buried beneath the wife and mother in those early scenes, using ragged, vérité-style camera work that takes merciless inventory of a certain stripe of posh, hard-edged modern family life in which dowdy grannies are invisible. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
In reality, it's messy in the way that life is, and with a rare and welcome obstreperousness. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Self-absorption is the vice of all these characters. That, not sex, is their sin--and Michell, Kureishi and their fine cast show this with a lucidity that cuts to the bone, a candor that draws blood. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jennie Punter
The complications of its story are found in the deep complexities of emotions and family relationships. Read full review
70
Village VoiceDennis Lim
By turns expansive and astringent, The Mother is a portrait of a woman who, with the dazed courage of someone finally awakened to the world after decades of passivity and repression, keeps on walking. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderAndrea Gronvall
Although this shares some of the acidity of Thatcher-era films, it owes more to David Lean's "Summertime" in its generosity toward an aging heroine who learns that any second chance is fraught with risk. Read full review
70
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Finally, we have found ourselves in a movie where the characters are free to blunder, even if it means turning their backs on us. There's powerful liberation in that, all around. Read full review
70
Washington PostStephen Hunter
You may not enjoy The Mother (I certainly didn't), but it's a movie so heavy on truth, its spell cannot be denied. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The film is marvelously acted all around, and the fact that there isn't a false note in the entire film is especially impressive given Kureishi's melodramatic contrivances and the fact that his characters are clichés whose behaviors are predictable at nearly every turn. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
There is in The Mother a rich understanding of where old age takes you. Along with the myth that seniors don't have sex drives, the film dispels a larger one: that the years bring wisdom. Read full review
50
VarietyDerek Elley
A portrait of a contempo British family drifting apart because of generational differences, The Mother ends up an uneasy brew of too many competing tastes and themes. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
The Mother winds up unpersuasive, in large part due to writer Hanif Kureishi, who visits on all his mopey characters such calculated savagery, it's hard to care much for them or to get onboard for the hope implied in the hastily stitched-on ending. Read full review
50
New York PostMegan Lehmann
A promising film that is dragged down by the weight of its gray morbidity. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
There's not a vaguely sympathetic character in sight; Kureishi ultimately seems prudishly disapproving of his heroine's last gasp of sexual adventure; and what another writer might have found liberating and healing, he finds distasteful and destructive. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
A certain inevitability hangs over The Mother – as if any of this could end well – but if Kureishi's framework is perhaps predictable, his knotty, complex characters are not. Read full review
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