With Mothering Sunday, director Eva Husson has created an atmospheric and many layered, 1920s-set feature based on Graham Swift’s novella.  Adapted by Lady Macbeth screenwriter Alice Birch, it stars Josh O’Connor as Paul, an engaged and engaging upper-class fellow having a secret affair with a neighbour’s maid, Jane Fairchild.  The film flits back and forth between distinct periods in Jane’s life, a natural-born writer, beautifully played by Odessa Young.  Janes’s story takes us from her early days in an orphanage, to her life as a maid in the 1920’s upper-class household, through her midlife relationship with philosoher Donald ( the brilliant Sope Dirisu), and portrayed fleetingley as a successful author in her old age by Glenda Jackson.

It’s also a moving depiction of grief from a supporting cast of Oscar-winning heavyweights: Olivia Colman and Colin Firth play a couple who have lost their son in World War I.  She’s silent and miserable, apart from one heartbreaking outburst; he’s putting on a jovial show and repressing his sadness, all stiff upper lip.  The event of Mothering Sunday does not feel like a celebration, however much champagne they drink in the beautiful English countryside.  It’s a sad indictment of a society unable to articulate its grief and sorrow.

Dir. Eva Husson/2021/110 minutes/Certificate 15

Doors 7.00

Film 7.30pm

Tickets £5/£6 available from HEART reception and online