The Mother

'Kureishi's screenplay is one of his most focused and engaging since

My Beautiful Laundrette.' Allan Hunter,

Screen International

At sixty-five years of age, May fears that life has passed her by – that she has become just another invisible old lady whose days are more or less numbered. When she and her husband travel down from the north to visit their grown-up children in west London, she finds them characteristically inattentive. But then her husband's unexpected death pulls the ground from under her, and she subsequently embarks on a passionate affair with Darren, a man half her age, who is renovating her son's house and sleeping with her daughter, Paula. In the midst of this tumultuous situation, May begins to understand that it can take a lifetime to feel truly alive.