The film as a whole succeeds superbly both in its evocation of a sensual, erotic love affair and in its treatment of the bereaved families who, despite their elevated place in society, can never replace all that they’ve lost.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 11, 2022

O’Connor is an actor who always seems to be regarding life with a raised eyebrow and the rapport between him and Young turns them into loving co-conspirators meditating on the fluidity of time.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 4, 2022

Mothering Sunday, a heart-wrenching drama directed by Eva Husson and based on the novel by Graham Swift, shows that people are more than what they do. They are also the sum of their traumas.

| Apr 13, 2022

There’s a Malickian quality to the film that’s cheesy at moments, and the disjointed chronology is more aggravating than affecting.

| Apr 7, 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.

| Apr 7, 2022

It proves — yet again — that the best books are probably better left alone.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 31, 2022

A really good, solid film for the people who love Downton Abbey and who maybe want to see it with a bit of a kick.

| Mar 30, 2022

Count “Mothering Sunday” as a breakthrough for Young, as well as one for Husson, who deserves the international career that “Mothering Sunday” all but guarantees.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 28, 2022

On an intuitive, sensual level, Mothering Sunday is intoxicating. As a story with plot and characters, its nothing we havent seen before.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 25, 2022

Shimmers with confident filmmaking, fine performances and a belief in the melancholic resonance of a lovers’ sanctuary as something difficult to let go of.

| Mar 25, 2022

The picture is a bit arty and decorous; it could do with fewer swimmy camera moves. But Young vests it with a fascinating, flinty grace.

| Mar 24, 2022

“Mothering Sunday” never conveys the intensity of erotic passion, the ardor of creative ambition or the agony of grief. Even though it is ostensibly about... those feelings, it handles them with a tastefulness that is hard to distinguish from complacency.

| Mar 24, 2022

For all of the films somberness, its depiction of an era of rigid class divisions and incalculable loss still comes through the hazy, soft-focus goggles of nostalgia.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 23, 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.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 23, 2022

The costumes from Oscar winner Sandy Powell are gorgeous, but can hardly compete with Jane’s Pre-Raphaelite silky skin gorgeously lit by award-winning cinematographer Jamie Ramsay.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 25, 2022

This movie isn't especially subtle but it is well-intentioned and involving.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 19, 2021

Birch inventively shuffles the cards of Swift's source in a manner that, at its best, makes the film feel more like an emotional memory than an unfolding narrative.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2021

While so much of Mothering Sunday focuses on how grief, or the lack of grief, shapes its characters, it comes to an oddly inconclusive end.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2021

Mothering Sunday just falls short of a great movie; a radical attempt to shake up period-picture staidness, shot through with strong performances, impeccable craft and a strain of sadness, but it's never enough to tug vigorously at the heartstrings.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 12, 2021

A thoughtful and deeply affecting meditation on the loneliness of the lifelong writer.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2021