Mrs. Lowry and Son

Just a few years after playing the great British painter J.M.W. Turner in Mike Leigh's acclaimed "Turner," Timothy Spall took on the role of a very different English artist. "Mrs. Lowry and Son" is an intimate and tender portrait of the deep but complicated relationship between Laurence S. Lowry, who toils as an accountant to support his art, and his invalid mother Elizabeth (played by Vanessa Redgrave). She's bitter having been widowed and bankrupted and resentful of their working-class apartment. Laurence sees wonder in the people around him, which he expresses in the stories he tells her and in his paintings. Where Elizabeth is obsessed with social affirmation and belittles his son's paintings (at least until a cultured neighbor praises it), Laurence only wants his mother to understand and appreciate his work. Most of the film takes place in her bedroom, where he visits each night after work to care for her and keep her company, and the film is carried by their deep rapport. Redgrave offers a complex, nuanced performance as the domineering mother who nonetheless deeply loves her son and Spall complements her as the attentive son who remains committed to his work, driven by the beauty he sees around him where she only sees ugliness and squalor. Director Adrian Noble ends the film before Lowry was embraced as one of England's most celebrated painters and he offers a look at some of his most famous works in the epilogue. It's a tender yet powerful film, less about Lowry's work than the spirit that drove him and defined his art. On DVD with 30 minutes of cast and crew interviews and featurettes. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)