Mothering Sunday is a Christian celebration of mothers and mother churches in the United Kingdom and elsewhere on the fourth Sunday of Lent. The Graham Swift novel-based film “Mothering Sunday” is an “Upstairs/Downstairs” sort of story about a beautiful maid who has an affair with the scion of a wealthy family that is friendly with the family for whom she works. The story takes place over the course of a single day for the most part.
After awakening and dressing for work in the enormous house of the wealthy husband and wife the Nivens — aka Godfrey (Colin Firth) and Clarrie (Olivia Colman), an older couple grieving the death of their sons in World War I — their well-read and intelligent maid Jane Fairchild (Aussie Odessa Young, “Assassination Nation”) rides a bicycle to a neighboring estate, where she secretly meets young Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor, “The Crown”), whose brothers died in the war and who is engaged to the Nivens’ wild child daughter Emma (Emma D’Arcy, “Truth Seekers”). Oh, what a tangled web we weave.
“Mothering Sunday” flits around in time like a drunken bat. For the most part, it concentrates on the day Jane and Paul meet for sex. The lout is expected at an engagement lunch with his parents and the Nivens, who like most families of the time in England have also lost sons in the war. Although Paul and Jane could never marry according to the rules of the society of the time, he is obviously besotted by her.
