Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: MOTHERING SUNDAY [Toronto International Film Festival 2021 - Virtual]
The texture of the journey is paraphrased into what life brings someone, either in retrospect or in the moment. With "Mothering Sunday" [Special Presentations], the idea of what could have been but also how it is processed is simply a matter of individual identity. Life for Jane Fairchild is seeing her potential beyond her means. In a class system, even as recently as the 1930s, the motive of society as being that which relegated a person to their station is a constant. It still remains to this day to a point but depends on ambition. Jane is like Venus or a Miranda. When she is fully dressed and within the confines, she has to act a certain way but once within the walls of a certain estate with her lover who has his own issues, she is free. As a character, Paul (Josh O'Connor) is more a catalyst for thought. Like "Prospero" and "The Tempest", states of undress make reference to this. It is a story of all us being the same underneath but the essence of why we are is the bigger question. An interesting irony is that the two people Jane works for (Colin Firth & Olivia Colman in smaller roles) seem already passed their aspect of responding. Now granted this is in the cusp of the war.
Firth plays his man of the manor with a state of sadness but a lack of insight (not him as n actor but the character itself). Colman is very still but again her character sees things just in a selfish point of view and not quite as Jane would. But Jane herself too (as played with a subtle and yet beautiful knowing by Odessa Young) is selfish but her reasoning is as flawed as anyone else's. The metaphor of Fandango the horse is an interesting one because it speaks to what a thoroughbred is and its formative time...and when it should be put to pasture. The film follows in a slightly disjointed way, two times in Jane's life with two different men with reversals of approach though they seem to bring out an essence of contemplation in her realization of self. Actually at one point, the would-be fiancé of her first lover seems an awful lot like her (both in décor but different in time) which might be the parallel that life has already left her behind. The end tries to firm it up but the character herself, despite her success, always seems to watch the race from the sidelines, a spectator of behavior even though her own actions (or inaction at times) makes her just as much a participant. That is why simple scenes like ones in the car where nothing is said yet the world crumbles say so much. B
By Tim Wassberg
