
FilmInk
The film has a small canvas (sorry), and it suffers from a certain determined ordinariness, but it is affecting in other ways.
Full reviewArtist L.S. Lowry (two-time BAFTA nominee Timothy Spall) pursues his artistic ambitions to the chagrin of his domineering mother (Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave) in this British drama based on the stage play of the same name.
"Bed-ridden and bitter, Elizabeth (Redgrave) actively tried to dissuade her bachelor son from pursuing his ambitions, whilst never failing to voice her opinion at what a disappointment he was to her." (British Film Council)
LessThe film has a small canvas (sorry), and it suffers from a certain determined ordinariness, but it is affecting in other ways.
Full reviewThe film has a small canvas (sorry), and it suffers from a certain determined ordinariness, but it is affecting in other ways.
Full reviewIt’s exhausting and unkind, and you start to long for more scenes of Lowry just picking up a brush and watching his paint dry.
Full reviewThe movie's origins in a play are fairly clear. As ever in films about great painters, the work takes second place to the details of his daily life. There's more soup than paint here.
Full reviewSpall and Redgrave excavate every iota of meaning from the pages and get it shimmering up on the screen. In lesser hands, maybe Mrs Lowry and Son could have been a mite depressing, or even worse, "worthy". There's no danger of that here. In its best moments, this film crackles.
Full reviewWithin three or four short exchanges she establishes Mrs Lowry as one of the great maternal monsters of cinema, up there with Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest or Piper Laurie in Carrie.
Full reviewUnder the direction of theatre veteran Adrian Noble, it's an often stiff and unadventurous affair.
Full reviewIt cushions itself with needless amounts of nagging music, and winds up giving us a dainty little tour of the Lowry museum in Salford, where we can presumably expect the DVD to be sold until kingdom come.
Full reviewIf often sad and unsettling, the film is also livelier and less oppressive than it may sound thanks to the fine writing, deft direction by Adrian Noble, and the superb, if painful interplay between Redgrave and Spall.
Full reviewBoth Spall and Redgrave feel stifled and stiff-jointed, hemmed in by a thin, shallow-focus script that betrays its origins as a radio play all too easily.
Full reviewIt all feels like an uneventful, overly stuffy approach to a painter who was, after all, considered outlandishly strange.
Full reviewMrs. Lowry & Son is available to stream in Australia now on Google Play and Apple TV and Ritz at Home and Prime Video Store.
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