Firth and Colman are bereaved parents, the Nivens, who employ Jane. Firth does his familiar inarticulate, emotionally bottled thing that speaks volumes about how he's really feeling. Colman's few lines are the best in the film. Glenda Jackson plays much older Jane, who abandoned life as a servant in favour of working in a bookshop, later becoming a successful writer.
On the downside, the film shows character development by shifting the action back and forward in time, the 1920s, 1940s, and 1990s, which will appeal to some viewers but not to others and Alice Birch's script occasionally stumbles.
Good acting makes up for any shortcomings in the script. Yearning, vulnerability, smouldering passion and deep sadness are all there, wordlessly.
There's a memorable erotic scene with Jane and Paul in Paul's bedroom while his parents are out for the day. He smuggles her in, their first chance to be together in his home. It's as languidly shot as the rest of the film but the same slow pace tends to annoy after Paul leaves, when Jane wanders around his empty house, naked, familiarising herself with the family's photographs of sons killed in the war, and their library. She doesn't seem to care, although the audience does, that a family member might come home unexpectedly. Great dramatic tension there, subtly done too.
The film's main achievement is to show the effects of the trauma of war on a small slice of upper-crust society, contrasting the beauty on the surface with the struggle beneath. Recommended.
• Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly Recommended and Must See.
GIVEAWAY
The first person to bring an image or hardcopy of this review to Starlight Cinema Taupō qualifies for a free ticket to Mothering Sunday.
