Luke: New film “Four Mothers” is “equal parts heartwarming and heart-rending”

Four Mothers is a loose adaptation of the much-lauded Gianni Di Gregorio’s Italian comedy-drama Mid-August Lunch, from director/writer Darren and co-writer Colin Thornton.

The Thorntons were the sibling team behind 2016’s A Date for Mad Mary, one of the truly great Irish films of the last 10 years. Four Mothers, like Mad Mary, impresses with a delicate tonal balance. It’s a film that is equal parts heartwarming and heart-rending.

Edward (James McArdle), a novelist, has had to put his life and career on hold to care for his mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan), who is recovering from a stroke. Edward lives his life around Alma’s needs and schedule and has struggled to find any balance in his own life.

Edward’s first book went mostly ignored in Ireland but has found new success in reels, shorts and stories all over the Internet. This newfound interest promises a book tour and speaking engagement in the United States.

Now, torn between responsibility to himself, and responsibility for his mother, Edward’s situation is complicated threefold when his close friends leave their own mothers in Edward’s care while they attend Los Palomos Pride.

Edward’s day-to-day life is realised with that same attention to the humdrum that made for many of Mad Mary’s most memorable sequences.

His daily routine caring for Alma is shown to us in detail at the start of the film.  Dressing his mother, preparing meals, driving her to church and so on.

The cuts here are rhythmic, emphasising the same-old, same-old, day-in, day-out nature of their lives. Edward has no room to deviate from the rigidness of his schedule.

When Alma needs Edward, which is anytime he’s not with her, she rings a little bell. There’s no chance, then, for Edward to promote his book.

There’s a fun bit of physical comedy when Edward tries to take part in a radio interview. Alma is chiming in with the bell and Edward attempts to stow her away in a nearby room.

All the hubbub has Edward marblemouthed on the phone and the interview is a disaster. When he opens the door to let Alma out again she offers some motherly constructive, unconstructive criticism.

Alma communicates through tapped-out messages on an iPad and the flat, synthesised voice somehow manages to carry a mother-knows-best tone. Flanagan does great work with her face, selling exasperation with a nod or raised eyebrow.

Much of the film’s early laughs are tied to back-and-forth verbal sparring between Edward and Alma. Edward is always on the defensive, not so much a man in those moments as an overgrown boy.

Four Mothers builds on this aspect once the other women take up residence in Alma’s home.

There are the surly Jean (Dearbhla Molloy), the buttoned-down Maude (Stella McCusker) and the free-spirited and relatively youthful Rosey (Paddy Glynn).

Each of these women gives her own input into what Edward should do about his life, relationships and so on.

The characterisation is broad enough to work within Edward and Alma’s back-and-forth rhythms. But the Thorntons allow each of the women time and space of their own.

Generally, the ensemble is where most of the comedy and drama is at its best. For example, Dearbhla Molloy has a scene to herself singing karaoke that stands apart from the rest of the film.

Thornton surprises with this and other flourishes around the margins of what is a good-looking but fairly straight-ahead film stylistically.

There’s a charming sequence later that split-screens Edward’s friends’ Pride adventures with the four ladies getting dressed and ready.

As the men don sunglasses and swimwear, the women put on silver bracelets and rings, use stairlifts and so on.

The Thorntons’ writing pokes at its own warmth with the more caustic characterisation of Alma and Edward that comes through in the film’s more dramatic scenes.

They are sympathetic, even if their actions are not. Edward, with his sense of duty, puts a weighty burden on himself, and in turn, sees his mother as something of a burden as well.

McArdle plays Edward with a weariness that serves as the perfect foil when he’s the butt of a joke. But there’s a gravitas to the performance too, and when frustrations boil over the acting doesn’t feel melodramatic.

In one sequence, a comment by a medium that Edward takes the women to see has Edward pour out many years worth of buried emotions and unexpressed grievances.

Thornton shoots this scene in close-up, handheld and a little shaky. It’s a stylistic departure from the montage we saw earlier, or the music-backed bus ride scene that preceded this sequence with the medium. But Thornton matches style to action in a way that doesn’t feel jarring

Edward’s resentment towards his late father and his brother overseas are reflected back in his treatment of Alma. He is dutiful, and to some extent he seems to enjoy the suffering or self persecution, even if he won’t admit it.

Ultimately, it’s not Alma the person, or Alma the obligation that’s keeping him in Ireland, in stasis, away from potential fame and success. It’s the fear that he may not ever get what he feels he deserves.

That fear gets tangled up with Edward’s frustrations about his life and the life he could be living. Edward’s ex-boyfriend, Raf (Gaetan Garcia) knows that even without Alma, that fear of success, or failure, was always there.

An argument between Garcia and McArdle illuminated by a streetlight and vignetted with a cold fog, again, has that grounded feel to it. The contrast to the comedic scenes that bookend it, is carried on from A Date for Mad Mary which employed the same balancing act to great effect.

It’s no less effective in Four Mothers. The Thorntons have a knack for playing the heartstrings to whatever tune they want.

There’s an understanding of the weight that co-dependancy puts on familial relationships, of that push and pull, those extremes of feeling. There’s always a warmth there but Four Mothers is also a little cynical about it.

Deviations into the absurd or unexpected make those raw and human moments hit harder. Ultimately, Four Mothers is a feel-good film, but its willingness to get down in the dumps is charming and effortlessly affecting.