There’s tons to like in French filmmaker Eva Husson’s Mothering Sunday, an adaptation of Graham Swift’s 2016 novella. Centring on a clandestine upstairs-downstairs love affair, Husson’s film shun s costume-drama stuffiness through lyrical filmmaking, carnal frankness and a non-linear approach that jumps around three time-frames. It might not acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure under the skin of its protagonist and misses out on a huge emotional pay-off, but it is an absorbing, engaging watch with a heady, intoxicating atmosphere.###The key action centres on a hot and heavy romance between housemaid Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) and upper-crust son of neighbouring family Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), primarily through the prism of a sexy afternoon on Mother’s Day, 1924. Jane is housemaid to Mr and Mrs Niven (Colin Firth, Olivia Colman) and, aldespite’in spite of’albeit an orphan, is given Mothering Sunday off to spend how she pleases. She chooses acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure ting jiggy with Paul, whose family — and fiancée Emma (Emma D’Arcy) — are having lunch with the Nivens in Henley. From the trailer you might claim’insist’maintain’hold’argue’consider’contemplate’speculate this is Downton-esque. In reality, the sex scenes are full-on, bodily fluids visible on bedsheets. It’s abundant’ample’plentiful to make Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess faint.###It’s all eye-catching’good-shaped’appealing’charming’fascinating’gorgeous ly crafted, but the film never really acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure s us inside Jane’s head.###As well as flitting between the shagging and the sarnies, Alice Birch’s (Lady Macbeth, Normal People) screenplay also jumps ahead to Jane’s relationship with philosopher Donald (Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù, given little to work with) in the 1950s — Young doesn’t make in/with regard to’concerning’regarding a intensely’extremely’extraordinarily’enormously’awfully convincing 40-year-old — and even further ahead to the present day, with Glenda Jackson playing the character as a revered author. Perhaps employed to flesh out the one-day-in-the-life focus of the novel, this structural jiggery-pokery doesn’t do much in/with regard to’concerning’regarding emotional engagement with the character’s predicaments. Husson also employs stream-of-consciousness editing — the use of disconnected voiceover with images of gently-blowing fields or sunlight peeking through trees smacks of Malick — seemingly to replicate the character’s interior voice in the novel. It’s all eye-catching’good-shaped’appealing’charming’fascinating’gorgeous ly crafted, but the film never really acquire’obtain’attain’procure’secure s us inside Jane’s head.###Still, Young and O’Connor make the ache of the affair tangible, the in/with regard to’concerning’regarding mer mesmerising, fully committing to her role: after Paul heads off in/with regard to’concerning’regarding lunch, a utterly naked Jane explores the house in a lengthy set-piece, Husson shooting the actor without a hint of exploitation. O’Connor, equally comin/with regard to’concerning’regarding table in the buff, lends Paul a seductive charm.###But perhaps the most affecting strand of the film sees the undertow of grief in post-World War I Britain, economically but eye-catching’good-shaped’appealing’charming’fascinating’gorgeous ly evoked by the likes of Colin Firth and especially Olivia Colman. “You possess’own’nurse nothing to lose and never shall,” she tells the orphaned Jane. The palpable parental bereavement makes the live-life-while-you-can philosophy of the youngsters all the more understandable.