Four Mothers review – canny crowd-pleaser

Here’s an unexpected remake. Back in 2008, the Italian writer/director-star Gianni Di Gregorio – think Nanni Moretti, with fewer neuroses – enjoyed a pan-European matinee hit with Mid-August Lunch, a gentle-to-negligible comedy about a fiftysomething bachelor (played by Di Gregorio himself) obliged to attend not just his own aged mother but the mothers of several contemporaries.

As its title hinted, this was a light repast of a film, though it took at least one twinkly-eyed glance at a mounting crisis in social care. Nearly two decades later, that crisis shows no signs of abating, and so it is we have this rejig from Ireland’s emergent Thornton brothers (Colin, who writes, alongside Darren, who directs), aiming to consolidate their 2016 sleeper success A Date for Mad Mary.

The story’s travelled from one traditionally Catholic realm to another, so the latent Madonna worship requires scant translation. But the Thorntons add a teaspoon of realism, the better to bolster Di Gregorio’s sunny fluff. For starters, their protagonist Edward (James McArdle) is a gay YA novelist, representing all those penniless creatives stranded on the lower rungs of the housing ladder. (One of the film’s truths: publishers’ advances aren’t what they used to be.) His status as a carer for his mute 81-year-old ma (Irish screen great Fionnula Flanagan) is threatening to derail a planned US promotional tour; those plans unravel completely after two pals and his therapist also dump their mothers (Dearbhla Molloy, Stella McCusker and Paddy Glynn) on him to attend Pride in Maspalomas.

The gag is that Edward’s so codependent he can’t say no, but this is also one of those contrivances a movie asks us to swallow so it can get everyone in the same place. Once they’re there, Four Mothers enters familiar territory, toggling between farce and something more sentimental, undercutting its comedy with cuddliness. Edward’s soon juggling the needs of four often-withering matriarchs, the demands of an agent trying to toughen him up for America, and messages from those partying while he’s doing his filial duty. The conflict gets cranked up – unlike genial Gianni, Edward is a resentful sadsack – but only slightly. The Thorntons are too busy modernising the material, embracing podcasts and mindfulness apps that weren’t a thing in 2008.

In places, Four Mothers skews broad: one joke involving the word “pouffe” is eminently guessable. Yet it’s modulated by the sweetness in these performances, and by McArdle in particular, soft, rueful and armed with the most thoughtful writing here. The mas prove less formidable than the Italian mammas, though there are nice moments for the silent Flanagan, acting with eyes and iPad alone, and for Molloy as the wearied Joan, whose karaoke go-to is Black’s ‘Wonderful Life’. The Thorntons never match that track’s wrenching, deep-seated melancholy; caressing the middle of the road in a mobility scooter, their film is the kind of jolly consolation our industries make because they can’t steel themselves to go as hard as Michael Haneke’s Amour. A canny crowd-pleaser, nevertheless: enough to distract anyone from the onward rush of time.