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MRS LOWRY & SON
Director: Adrian Noble Cast: Timothy Spall, Vanessa Redgrave, Stephen Lord, Michael Keogh, Wendy Morgan MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:31 Release Date: 11/1/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 31, 2019 The son, who is not yet the famous painter he will become, doesn't want much. He wants to paint, and he wants his mother, if not to support, then at least to like his work. She, resenting how her life has turned out, has no interest in doing anything of the kind, and that's the gist of Mrs Lowry & Son. The story here, set for the most part in the bedroom of the ailing mother, is one of constant misery. L.S. Lowry (Timothy Spall) is a struggling artist at this point in his life, unappreciated and unrecognized by almost everyone. The only opinion he cares about anyway is that of his mother Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave), who was once well-to-do, had dreams of becoming a concert pianist, and lived in a fancy London neighborhood. L.S.'s father came along with promises of success, only to fall into debt and send the family to a more impoverished town. There, she and her son have lived since. L.S. shows no signs of being more successful than his father, meaning Elizabeth will be stuck there for the rest of her now-short life. Martyn Hesford's screenplay repeatedly hits these character beats over and over again, with only minimal variation. Whole lines of dialogue are repeated within scenes for effect and across the movie, because the screenwriter seems to have no interest in anything else about these characters. Sure, L.S. isn't entirely miserable. He loves to paint, and when he gets out of the house, the artist enjoys taking in the quirkiness and the resilience against hardship that characterize the area where he has lived since childhood. Mostly, though, the movie, directed by Adrian Noble, focuses on the codependent relationship between mother and son. L.S. just wants her approval, and Elizabeth seems to take some cruel joy in at least being better than him. Spall, playing downtrodden and naïve without being completely pathetic, and Redgrave, confined to a bed but full of all-encompassing spite, do their best with this repetitive material. Their performances give a much broader, more sympathetic sense of this relationship—because each of the characters wants more than they have but aren't willing to express that unifying truth—than the movie itself provides. Mrs Lowry & Son, though, is stuck in the mire of the worst aspects of their relationship and the monotonous narrative. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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