Darren Thornton and Colin Thornton’s Four Mothers is screening at BFI Flare on March 26th, 28th, and 30th at BFI Southbank. Book Tickets. Four Mothers is showing in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from 4 April.
Sometimes, without warning, our lives can change in an instant. Often, this change occurs due to ill health, either in ourselves or someone close to us, and when it involves an older parent, quick decisions must be made about caring responsibilities. Novelist Edward (James McArdle) faces that sudden change when his mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan), suffers a stroke that leaves her unable to speak or walk. He lovingly cares for her, cooks for her and transports her to hospital appointments, but his care has come at a personal price: his sense of self and freedom as a middle-aged gay man whose celebrated young adult novel has just hit bookstore shelves in the United States.
Still, at least Edward has two friends and a therapist who understands his feelings, as they also care for their mums. The trouble is, they also feel trapped like Edward, and selfishly, they are about to fly to the Maspalomas Winter Pride Festival without telling Edward until they are at the airport, leaving their mums, Jean (Dearbhla Molloy), Rosie (Paddy Glynn) and Maud (Stella McCusker) in his care. Suddenly, Edward has four mums to care for, a publisher eager for him to fly to the US, and a makeshift bed in his car! Still, at least an old flame for whom he still has feelings, Raf (Gaetan Garcia), is on hand to offer support.
Ahead of Four Mothers screening at this year’s BFI Flare, I caught up with Darren and Colin Thornton to discuss their tender, loving and beautifully crafted comedy about life, love, care and the need to forge a new world when the old one is turned upside down in an instant.
Q: For those attending the BFI Flare screenings of Four Mothers, can you give us a brief synopsis of the film and its key themes?
Darren: Four Mothers is a film about a middle-aged gay novelist who is living at home, caring full-time for his elderly mother, who’s just recovered from a stroke and is reliant on a voice app to communicate. They’re sort of trapped in this small house and struggling with one another, and then three of his friends abscond to a Pride Festival in Gran Canaria and leave their elderly mothers in his care without asking him in advance. He just arrives home, and they’ve landed in the house. So he finds himself stuck in his small home with four very demanding elderly ladies who are all at odds with one another. At the same time that this is going on, he’s also in the midst of a work crisis as the novel that he’s been working on for quite a while takes off, and he’s needed in America for a book tour.
Q: Four Mothers is loosely based on the 2008 Italian film Mid-August Lunch. What attracted you to Gianni Di Gregorio’s film and its themes?
Colin: Just after our debut feature came out, A Date for Mad Mary, our own mum became quite sick, and we very quickly ended up stepping into the role of carers along with our aunt and our dad. Around that time, we received a DVD of the Italian film, but we were distracted, as taking care of Mum was, you know, intense and all-consuming. However, every now and then, Darren would say, ‘Oh, we should watch that Italian movie that we got sent.’ There could be something in it.
We hadn’t heard of the Italian film at all, and then one day, when I was over at Darren’s, I randomly picked up a DVD, looked at the cover, and said, ‘Wow, what’s this?’ ‘This sounds amazing.’ He said, ‘Oh, that’s the Italian movie that we were sent,’ so we decided to put it on. Literally, from the movie’s opening moments, we were like, not only does this film look incredible, but we’re also weirdly living that experience at the moment. So that’s how it came to be. We flew over to London, met with producers Jack Sidey and Eric Abraham, and pitched the direction we wanted to take in an adaptation, and they responded positively.
Darren: It’s kind of funny as well because we are both pretty plugged into European cinema, and it was strange that we hadn’t heard of Mid-August Lunch previously, especially when everyone else was like, ‘Yeah, that was a big festival hit in 2008.’ Everyone we knew had seen and loved it, and the more we talked to people about its themes, the more they told us how meaningful it was for them, and the more scared we became of developing our own version.
We didn’t want to do a straight English translation or try to recreate what Gianni had done so beautifully; for us, the original film needed to serve as a springboard for creating an Irish story that was specifically ours. We discussed Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped, a remake of James Toback’s Fingers; they’re different, yet share the same framework. That was our thinking: we would create something entirely different while celebrating the framework and beauty of the Italian film.
Q: Four Mothers is a film about caring responsibilities and the sudden changes that we all face at some point. You’ve discussed your own experience in relation to care. How did that experience shape the screenplay?
Darren: I guess at the start, we were looking more at the relationship of a mother and son than the carer’s experience. We particularly wanted to explore the middle-aged gay male experience and the power of the mother-and-son bond for many gay men. Often, it falls on a gay son or daughter to fulfil the role of a caregiver because they may not be married with kids. There’s almost an expectation that you will step into that role, because why wouldn’t you? That expectation is often not there with other siblings. There was something really interesting about that. Then, we began to explore our care experiences in the story; for example, Alma, played by Fionnula Flanagan, relies entirely on an iPad to speak. That was true of our mum, and it was a very painful process when she lost her voice. She was a great talker, so there was an element of us getting revenge on that device by using it as a tool for comedy. I guess it was cathartic. As Alma loses her voice, Edward tries to find his.
Colin: One theme in the film that doesn’t get much attention is loneliness: a sense of loneliness surrounds all of the characters. I remember when we were deeply involved in caring for Mum, and I was about to turn 40, or maybe I had just turned 40. I was so lonely and thought I would never find a husband.
We wrote the first draft of the script very quickly after our mum passed away, so there are a lot of really personal details in there. For example, at the beginning of the story, when Edward helps her get dressed and prepares breakfast, much of that comes from our experience. So yeah, there’s a lot of our feelings and emotions in the film.
Q: You have brought together a fantastic ensemble cast led by James McArdle and Fionnula Flanagan. Can you tell me about the casting process?
Darren: We worked really hard on the casting; the importance of casting is never lost on us. Our films aren’t effects-driven; they’re about the characters, and an audience needs to be able to connect with each character. On casting the mothers, some agents came back to us saying, ‘The actor loved the script. It’s really, really funny. But they’re worried that if they play an older woman in a wheelchair with limited capacity, that’s all they will be offered.’ It’s a valid point, but something that we hadn’t expected. So we scrambled around a bit, but then met Fionnula, and it was a eureka moment; we even share an agent, so in many ways, the right person was in front of us all the time. Fionnula is truly amazing and carries a remarkable presence.
Colin: Then there was James; he’s such a phenomenal actor, but he didn’t initially feature on our radar. I suppose that’s because James is Scottish, and we were focused on Irish actors. I had seen James in Angels in America at the National Theatre and was completely blown away by his performance; therefore, I had stored his name in my memory. Darren had seen him in Michael Winterbottom’s film On the Road.
Darren: Yeah, he played a roadie and was beautiful. It was such a stunning, subtle, and rich performance.
Colin: So we picked up a phone call with James and spoke for about twenty minutes, and then we met over Zoom, and he had this amazing Irish accent, so at that point, it became a no-brainer.
Darren: You always kind of hope things like that happen; from the first call with James, he felt a really strong connection to Edward. So, when you find an actor who responds to the character in such a strong way, it’s brilliant and joyful.
Colin: James is brilliant with accents, but he was quite nervous because, you know, if you get the Irish accent wrong in Ireland, they’ll be out with their pitchforks. He worked really hard and spoke in the accent pretty much the whole time while we were shooting, and I completely forgot, weirdly, that he was Scottish. But then, when we finished shooting, he went back to speaking in his own accent, and I was so weirded out by it; I was like, who are you? Who is this person?
Q: There’s an old saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Do you think it also takes a village to care for us when we get older? And how does Four Mothers reflect on the importance of community?
Darren: There are undoubtedly conversations on community in Four Mothers, which we passionately believe in, but we didn’t discuss it much during development. We have observed women at the heart of the community, from anniversaries to masses and funerals, our whole lives. Women would often manage everyone’s grief or come together when someone was sick; this role that women take on flows through the film alongside Edward’s experience. After the screenings, people came up to us and shared their experiences of caring, which was truly amazing.
Colin: Yeah, without saying too much about the ending, it was a gradual process of getting to that point. Initially, the characters of the other gay sons featured more heavily in those final moments. And, as Darren said, I don’t remember exactly when, but I recall having some conversations, and something clicked; it just felt right for us to change the ending.
Darren: Fionnula significantly impacted those decisions following a reading online; she said, ‘You know, we should end the film with the women,’ and we were like, oh God, it’s so obvious!
Four Mothers is screening at BFI Flare on March 26th, 28th, and 30th at BFI Southbank.
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