A coruscating drama, based on an award winning novel, which explores the troubled relationships between the various members of an English family over a long summer when Eleanor, the stroke-afflicted old mother decides to give away her beautiful house in Provence to a New Age Foundation run by an Irish charlatan rather than to her own son and his young family.
There is potential in this bitter family drama but the woozy camerawork and mannered, overblown performances make Mother's Milk a tiresome experience.
If you haven't read the book, this will seem a decent, slightly dull story of dispossession; if you have read it, you'll know what's gone missing.
The result looks a bit like television, though it isn't bad: sparky, boisterous, cynical, a little self-conscious but more grownup and literate than most new British movies.
A challenging and well-acted portrayal of family dysfunction that will appeal to fans of Joanna Hogg's exceptional Archipelago.
There are a few achingly bad moments that unnecessarily point up the crudity of vacuous British expatriates, but this is generally a film that knows its foreign milieu without being sneeringly knowing.
A cold and confrontational drama, as frosty as its cast of upper-middle class misfits.
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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