04/04/2025 - Darren Thornton reimagines Mid-August Lunch, in which a bumbling middle-aged man looks after four demanding old ladies, as a more sombre, serio-comic affair

l-r: Dearbhla Molloy, Gaeten Garcia, Fionnula Flanagan, Stella McCusker and Paddy Glynn in Four Mothers

In the mass of cultural tropes about mothers and motherhood, Irish and Italian culture share distinct commonalities. The respective “mam” and “mamma” have similar characteristics: to lightly invoke the countries’ Roman Catholic heritage, they are cut from the same cloth.

And so, we have the hook of Irish writer-director Darren Thornton’s second feature, Four Mothers, a belated remake of Mid-August Lunch [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Gianni Di Gregorio’s charming Italian comedy from 2008 (itself interestingly produced by Matteo Garrone, who co-wrote Gomorrah [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Domenico Procacci
interview: Jean Labadie
interview: Matteo Garrone
film profile] with Di Gregorio). Premiering late last year at BFI London and arriving in domestic and UK cinemas today, 4 April, courtesy of BFI Distribution, it’s an honourable but only intermittently amusing redo, with its premise and ideas expanded by delving sensitively into Irish queer life, and the pressures it places on the traditional nuclear family, ageing and the professional world.

As the on-screen star, Di Gregorio’s own “Gianni” was just a “guy”, or vague comic outline; here, the protagonist Edward (James McArdle) is a fully developed character with a backstory and forestory: his impressive success as an early-career novelist creates a metafictional element to the director and his brother Colin Thornton’s screenplay. His metaphorical umbilical cord to his mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan), is still intact, as she’s been rendered mute following a stroke; while he’s working as her part-time carer in between redrafts and tense Zoom calls with his publisher, his very likeable ex Raf (Gaetan Garcia) also assists with her physical therapy.

After Edward’s two mates Billy (Gordon Hickey) and Colm (Gearoid Farrelly) up sticks to Maspalomas Pride, a popular fetish-orientated event in Spain, their own ageing mams Jean (Dearbhla Molloy) and Maude (Stella McCusker) are dumped at Alma’s place for care and company. And if three is the magic number, four is more of a crowd: now liberated from the closet after a long-term heterosexual marriage, Edward’s therapist Dermot (Rory O’Neill) is also eyeing the event, so his mild-mannered mother, Rosey (Paddy Glynn), makes it a quartet.

That set-up seems deceptively broad, compared to the reality: like Di Grigorio’s film, the patience and situational nature of the humour, and the glancing insights into human nature create a welcome arthouse or indie feel, buttressed by the pale colour scheme and the natural light-swathed cinematography. Otherwise, Edward’s arc is still central, as he contends with alleviating the repressed parts of his persona and surmounting his social anxiety, with a promo trip to the USA mooted after his YA-friendly novel blew up on TikTok. Unfortunately, the dramatic and comedic strands of the story run in parallel, rather than being intertwined, the four mothers largely on hand to provide twinkly-eyed gazes in reverse shots to McArdle’s furrowed-brow grimaces.

Beyond this, Four Mothers is just too genial, sincere and “nice” to completely dismiss, and could chime with audiences looking for something ingratiating and light, but far from weightless.

Four Mothers is a co-production between Ireland and the UK, staged by Port Pictures and Portobello Films and Television. Its world sales are overseen by mk2 films.