MOTHERING SUNDAY

Name: MOTHERING SUNDAY
Item: MOTHERING SUNDAY
Author: Tess Farrand

"Boring, Stuffy and Lewd"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

MOTHERING SUNDAY is a period drama that resembles DOWNTON ABBEY, but with endless graphic nudity, sex and dirty talk. It’s a boring, stuffy drama set in England. It depicts the illicit 1924 affair between an upper class man and another family’s maid as he awaits his impending wedding to another woman. The story uses a non-linear approach. It jumps among three different timeframes in telling the story of the young maid who works in the home of the young man’s future in-laws.

MOTHERING SUNDAY is a strange movie because of its sexual frankness. Such content is often left out of period dramas. Traditional viewers of period dramas are likely to be turned off completely. Meanwhile, younger viewers, who might be seduced into watching a sexually explicit story, will be turned off by the movie’s slow-moving pace. MOTHERING SUNDAY has some decent performances by people engaging in indecent behavior, and its settings are pretty. However, the lack of a compelling lead character, combined with the extremely graphic portrayal of an illicit affair, make MOTHERING SUNDAY a movie that media-wise moviegoers will want to avoid.

Content:

(PaPaPa, LL, SSS, NNN, A, D, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong pagan worldview about a maid’s illicit affair in 1824 England with an upper class man and then follows what happens to the maid

Foul Language:

Four “f” words and 10 profanities

Violence:

No violence

Sex:

Scenes of depicted fornication includes naked man is seen thrusting atop a panting woman with her breast showing, the man and woman have intercourse standing against a wall while clothed later and the woman winds up having blood on her clothes, and another scene shows that the man left his semen on the bed sheets after and the couple talk in risqué terms about his “seed” for a minute

Nudity:

Woman is shown fully nude from the side and back mostly, frequently topless frontally and in one scene is shown fully nude walking around a house, with her genitalia showing, and multiple scenes of man with both rear and frontal nudity, graphically shown

Alcohol Use:

Alcohol use

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Some smoking but no drugs;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

The entire movie is built around an illicit affair between a woman and a man who’s about to marry another woman, so adultery and cheating are rampant and positively portrayed as romantic and sexy.

More Detail:

If you’ve ever wondered what DOWNTON ABBEY would be like with endless graphic nudity, graphic sex and dirty talk, MOTHERING SUNDAY is the movie that brings that to life. A boring and stuffy drama set mainly in 1924 England, it depicts the illicit affair between a high-class man and another family’s maid as he awaits his impending wedding to another woman.

The movie is a typical British costume-drama, except for the fact that the two leads are often completely lacking in costumes and are stark naked. One other surprise is that the movie uses a non-linear approach in its storytelling, as it jumps among three different time frames in telling the story of the development of Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), who is a young maid in the home of upper-crust couple the Nivens (Colin Firth, Olivia Colman), the young man’s future in-laws.

Jane receives a call on Mothering Sunday (the British Mother’s Day) from her secret lover Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), who invites her to engage in a day of carnality when she’s given the day off from work. Mixed in between their repeated nude scenes and dirty talk are scenes of the Nivens having lunch with the rest of Paul’s family and his fiancée, with everyone unaware of the affair.

The movie also has plenty of flash-forwards to other phases of Jane’s life, as she develops a career as a writer. Viewers first see her relationship with a philosopher in the 1950s, but the segments are poorly drawn as the movie never provides a compelling look at what drives Jane in life. Also, Odessa Young doesn’t portray Jane as a 40-year-old in convincing fashion.

The movie winds up with veteran British actress Glenda Jackson portraying Jane as a successful author in her 70s. The problem is that the more recent sections of the movie don’t really add much to the story, and viewers still are left without a strong understanding of Jane’s inner drive and motives, which is a problem when the movie is meant to be character-driven with Jane as the prime focus.

MOTHERING SUNDAY is a strange movie because of its sexual frankness, as such content is often left out of period dramas. Traditional viewers of period dramas are likely to be turned off completely. Meanwhile, younger viewers, who might be seduced into watching a sexually explicit story, will be turned off by the movie’s slow-moving pace.

Aside from the copious amounts of nudity, including repeated full-frontal views of the young lovers, the movie has a clear shot of the man’s spilled semen in bedsheets in one scene and blood on the woman’s clothes after another bout of sex. Why anyone needs to see such content is beyond understanding.

MOTHERING SUNDAY has some decent performances by people engaging in indecent behavior, and its settings are pretty. However, the lack of a compelling lead character, combined with the extremely graphic portrayal of an illicit affair, make MOTHERING SUNDAY a movie that media-wise moviegoers will want to avoid.

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What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.