Mrs Lowry & Son (2019)

Directed by: Adrian Noble | 92 minutes | biography, drama | Actors: Vanessa Redgrave, Timothy Spall, Stephen Lord, David Schaal, John Alan Roberts, Wendy Morgan, Michael Keogh, Joanne Pearce, Jon Furlong, Giselle Cullinane, Rose Noble, Kila Lord Cassidy, Paul Bergquist, Laurence Mills, Amanda Higson, Jennifer banks

An impeccable decor, two top actors such as Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall in intimate conjunction: ‘Mrs Lowry and Son’ has good intentions for the viewer at the start. We may well appreciate a retrospective voice-over at the beginning of the film, although it is immediately clear that the perspective of the old Mrs. Lowry is unnecessary frills. My son can do it on his own, especially when played by the ever-beautiful Spall (including ‘Secrets and Lies’, ‘Mr. Turner’).

Spall can growl good-naturedly as an old gentleman as well as endearing in the role of mother’s baby. Here he is painter LS Lowry, known for English industrial landscapes from the first half of the twentieth century. Yes, we get the clichés of historical drama, with ditto music, but it is a pleasant expectation that Adrian Noble offers us, if only because of the interplay of Redgrave and Spall.

He cooks for mother, they eat together at her bedside. Smalltalk or not, it sparkles. ‘I long for you to be happy mother, one day’. He must be in his fifties by then. As if it were Carla and Frank van Putten, the mother and son creation of Koot and Bie, mother is looking for a partner for her live-in son Laurie, should she pass away soon. In ‘Mrs Lowry and Son’ it is more endearing than laughing.

Is there anything else going on? Fine, but homely conversations are interesting enough. There’s something about the late father’s business failure that the son must make up for. The film is genuinely too sweet to look for manipulative powers in mother, although there are definitely some. As a portrait of the oppressive love between mother and son, ‘Mrs Lowry and Son’, based on a radio play, is certainly a success.