Loosely based on the gentle, charming Italian 2008 film Mid-August Lunch, a national holiday when cities are deserted, Four Mothers, directed by Darren Thornton, opens out into a broader Irish take on getting old and being gay.
Dad’s not the word
Four Mothers
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
CAUTION: Here be spoilers
Gay YA writer on the cusp of fame and a US book tour cuddly Edward (James McArdle) lives with his elderly mother Alma (much-awarded Fionnula Flanagan). She needs a lot of care because she has had a stroke and cannot speak, except movingly with her eyes and face – we always know what she is thinking – but is robustly liberated by a keyboard voice synthesiser, which she uses unmercifully.
James’ two gay friends decide to save their relationship by going to a riotous Tenerife Pride festival and dump their unwilling mothers with him, and his 53-year-old recently un-closeted psychotherapist suddenly gets the urge to go too and find himself, also leaving his mother with James. So without warning James has four elderly widows with varying medical conditions and a pill routine that “would challenge a trained nurse” in the bedrooms of his small house for a weekend, has to sleep in his car while the Zoom phone-pressure from his publisher intensifies and the dreaded tour draws near.
He needs help from a gay friend Raf (Gaetan Garcia) to drive them all to appointments as there are too many plus walking aids to fit in his car, funerals and a medium in Galway (Niamh Cusack) in a council coach. The film opens out from what was a deliberately claustrophobic location in the Italian version, an obvious diversion.
Four Mothers concentrates on Edward’s niceness and career, his gay friends and the back stories of the four women. The four elderly actresses (Maude, Stella McCusker); (Jean, Dearbhla Molloy) and (Rosie, Paddy Glynn) are scene-stealingly excellent and their characters are well-differentiated, but they all agree on the indignities of old age and being thought by their sons to need a “minder”. The most moving scene is where they open up to each other, and reveal when they first knew their sons were gay and how they reacted.
The film comes across as very professionally made (it uses mobile phone footage) but it is also a charming and funny, heart-warming, rather cosy Irish take on getting old and being gay – unstated in the original that it is based on.
Four Mothers screened at the BFI London Film Festival and is released on 4 April 2025 in the UK and Ireland.
