Mother’s Milk
2011
A powerful, moving and often funny feature film based on the award-winning novel, Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn and part of his Patrick Melrose series, about an English family utterly dependent upon one another but locked in destructive relationships from which there is no escape. Patrick’s ageing, sick mother’s decision to leave their holiday house in Provence to a New Age Foundation run by an Irish charlatan rather than her own son some gives the narrative its central conflict and dramatic tension. The film touches with subtlety and intrigue on issues of child rearing, New Age spiritualism, assisted suicide, alcoholism, infidelity and disinheritance.
w: www.mothers milk-thefilm.com
Irish Times
December 7 2012
Sight and Sound
December 1 2012
The Observer
November 11 2012
Radio Times
November 9 2012
Screen Daily
November 9 2012
Independent
November 8 2012
The Guardian
November 8 2012
Empire Online
November 5 2012
The humour is brittle, British and throwaway but with a tang of real poison...sparky, boisterous, more grownup and literate than most new British movies.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
A film that knows its foreign milieu without being sneeringly knowing.
Philip French, The Observer
Its portrait of the upper middle classes takes hold and you get a strong sense of the uneatable in pursuit of the unspeakable.
Derek Malcolm, The Evening Standard
Funny and perceptive...an affecting social comedy of disinheritance. Think Jane Austen meets Evelyn Waugh meets Oliver Assayas’ Summer Hours.
Colin Dibben, Close-Up Film
Strongly written, full of provocative ideas about class and motherhood and extremely well performed. In its quiet moments it hits its emotional stride.
Hannah McGill, Sight and Sound
Attractively staged, punctuated by a series of strong performances that give a sense of momentum to the drama, a real sense of atmosphere. the humour is nicely dry.
Mark Adams, Screen International
The script conveys languor as well as anger and certain performances are devilishly right.
Anthony Quinn, The Independent.
An engaging saga, the performances are fine and director Gerald Fox ably captures the local ambience and the distorted perspectives.
The Radio Times