BEFORE: Unlike "The Long Good Friday", today's film IS on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", and watching this tonight brings me up to 440 seen, which is something, but it means I've still got a long way to go. I could watch 60 more movies on that list and still not be halfway done. So I doubt I'll ever "finish", there's no ending in sight. So why do it? Why continue on? Well, I'm still having fun being my own movie festival programmer, and doing it completely the way I want to do it.
Trevor Laird carries over from "The Long Good Friday". My DVR did get fixed today, it took the cable technician about two hours to lay down new wiring from the junction to my house, and up into the bedroom, basically all the actual cable needed to be replaced, which makes me wonder why I don't just get satellite, or we upgrade to fiber optics or something. Eventually the DVR stopped its cycle of constant rebooting, and I didn't have to swap out the box and lose 71 episodes of "Chopped" that I never have time to watch. So there's that, another repair job done, now the next job is to get the window cranks fixed, and a guy came today to give us an estimate, so we won't have to pull off a heist to cover that cost, but it is still expensive, which is part of the reason why I need a better job. Got a BIG bank deposit for all my hours at the theater last month, though, so accepting all the extra shifts in April did eventually pay off. Now I've got extra shifts in May - and June is Festival Month, so one more big chance to make some cash before the place closes for July and August. Maybe I'll have a new job by then, or maybe I'll have to scramble for work, we'll see.
THE PLOT: Following the death of her adoptive parents, a successful young black optometrist establishes contact with her biological mother - a lonely white factory worker living in poverty in East London.
AFTER: This is the first of THREE films curated for Mother's Day weekend - I suppose it didn't really matter which one lands on the day itself, but it turns out to be the next film after this one. So this one goes out to both biological AND adoptive mothers, because they all deserve to be celebrated. And these three films link together by actor, because that's how I do it. If it wasn't these three films, it could have been "Parallel Mothers" and "All About My Mother", both starring Penelope Cruz - maybe I'll get to those two next year.
But this is fine for today, a classic, well-respected film from 1996 that I somehow never got around to watching in the last 27 years, even though it was nominated for 5 Oscars in 1997, for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actresss, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. I'm still trying to get to as many Oscar-nominated films as possible over time, "Minari" was another recent one, and I'm hoping I chose some films that were nominated for Best Documentary Feature in my recent Doc Block, like "Attica" and "What Happened, Miss Simone?" - were there any others? I'm going to have to figure this out at some point.
No, no, this weekend is all about mothers, not counting up my progress in watching movies. This film is about a black woman tracking down her white biological mother who gave her up for adoption, and this comes as a surprise to the mother, and to her extended family in London as they gather for a BBQ, which is called a "garden party" in Brit-speak. JK. Look, I'm not going to get into semantics here about who's "white" and who's "black", shouldn't we be above all this stuff now, and not see color? Technically Hortense would be "half-black" or "half-white", but I think even that's too simplistic, a lot of people have multi-ethnic origins with a wider racial mix than that.
This is the big family secret that Cynthia's never talked about, the fact that she gave a baby up for adoption - sight unseen, apparently. It could happen. Her other daughter, Roxanne, was never told about this, so she doesn't know that she's got a half-sister out there somewhere, and Cynthia's brother, Maurice, does know about it, and he and his wife Monica often discuss the fact that Roxanne sort of has a right to know about this. But of course, it's been 21 years since the adoption, so even though some members of the family occasionally discuss this, nobody ever expected the woman to contact them, least of all Cynthia.
Sure, it's a confusing situation, but Cynthia and Hortense go out to a diner and try to hash out what it all means. Cynthia is a factory worker and Hortense is an optometrist, so it's not just a difference in race, it's a class difference, but flipped around so the audience is more likely to be OK with it - daughter Hortense is probably more well-off than her factory-worker mother. Hortense and Cynthia quickly develop a friendship, while tensions between Cynthia and her other daughter, Roxanne, are always running high. Familiarity breeds contempt, it seems - and Cynthia can't help being a nagging mother and Roxanne can't help but have a bad reaction to being lectured by her mother. They've just lived together too long, probably. Roxanne has just started seeing a scaffolder named Paul, and this leads to Cynthia finally giving Roxanne some sex advice, only GAD, who wants to hear that from their own mother? Nobody, that's who.
It all comes to a head during Roxanne's 21st birthday BBQ bash, or garden party, whatever - and Cynthia brings Hortense (under the guise of her being a work friend) and Roxanne brings Paul, and brother Maurice even invites his photo assistant, Jane. But before the party is over, Hortense's identity as Cynthia's daughter will be revealed, and a few other people will reveal their personal secrets, and look, it's just bound to be awkward, OK? It feels like this whole movie was a set-up to create the most awkward party scene ever put on film, even more uncomfortable than the parties in "Superbad" or "Bridesmaids", and maybe the only movie with a more awkward party would be "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". JK, again.
There's a lot of slice-of-life stuff here, perhaps a bit too much. The side-plot of the man who sold Maurice the photography studio coming back from Australia is an example of a plot point that doesn't really go anywhere, you could cut it from the film and you wouldn't lose anything, just a couple minutes off the running time. The montages of Maurice's photography clients is a bit cute, but it also doesn't add much to the movie, you could lose that as well without affecting the main storyline. People have all sorts of reasons for posing for professional photo portraits, we get it. And, sure, it's really an ensemble piece, so director Mike Leigh seemed to want to come up with side-plots that kept all of the characters busy, however in the end there's really only one central storyline that's going to grab our attention, and of course that's the relationship between Cynthia and Hortense - it SHOULD be the main focus of the film, but now I'm thinking that it's a bit up for debate whether it really was.
Ideally, any mother should love all of her children equally, but there's an obvious disconnect between that scenario and the one presented here, because Cynthia hasn't see one daughter in 21 years, and never expected to see her, not ever, not at all. But the reverse of that is also true - anyone with more than one mother (or step-mother or adoptive mother) should be able to love all of them equally, too. But is that what tends to really happen? Don't forget to call your mother (or mothers) tomorrow - I already sent a card and I'll call mine tomorrow, but I learned today that my mum's gone back into hospital, she gets fluid built up around her heart every few months, and has to get that taken care of. But I'll at least call to check on her tomorrow, before I have to go work at the theater.
Also starring Timothy Spall (last seen in "Spencer"), Brenda Blethyn (last seen in "Atonement"), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (last seen in "City of Ember"), Phyllis Logan, Claire Rushbrook (last seen in "Ammonite"), Wendy Nottingham (ditto), Elizabeth Berrington (also last seen in "Spencer"), Michele Austin, Lee Ross (last heard in "Locke"), Lesley Manville (last seen in "Hampstead"), Ron Cook (last seen in "The King's Man"), Alison Steadman (ditto), Emma Amos (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Diary"), Brian Bovell (last seen in "The Witches" (2020)), Clare Perkins, Elias Perkins McCook, Jane Mitchell, Janice Acquah, Hannah Davis, Terence Harvey (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Kate O'Malley, Joe Tucker (last seen in "Greed"), Richard Syms (last seen in "Their Finest"), Jonny Coyne (last seen in "Message from the King"), Peter Wight (last seen in "The Sense of an Ending"), Gary McDonald, Liz Smith (also last seen in "City of Ember"), Sheila Kelley, Angela Curran (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Linda Beckett, Phil Davis (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Anthony O'Donnell, Ruth Sheen (last seen in "Welcome to the Punch"), Mia Soteriou (last seen in "Eastern Promises"), Kate Doherty (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies").
RATING: 6 out of 10 chicken drumsticks
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