Emmy nominee Josh O’Connor proves he’s a movie star in ‘Mothering Sunday’
TORONTO — After the North American premiere of “Mothering Sunday” at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival Thursday night, a woman at the Princess of Wales Theatre asked actor Josh O’Connor a bizarre question.
“What is it like playing a fictional character?” the star-struck audience member said.
Excuse me? That’s a silly comment to make to an actor, as the whole point of acting is to embody someone other than yourself. But what she meant is that O’Connor is best known for his portrayal of the very real Prince Charles on Netflix’s “The Crown.” He’s nominated for a 2021 Emmy Award for it.
At first taken aback, the 31-year-old Brit had a winning retort. “The Crown” is “mostly fiction,” he said with a smile.
You could tell that people are positively enamored with this guy.
Also palpable was the feeling that, with “Mothering Sunday,” O’Connor has advanced into a new stage of stardom. Here, he plays an irresistible, confident romantic lead instead of a sniveling, down-in-the-dumps Charles. He’s billed higher than Olivia Colman, Colin Firth and Glenda Jackson.
His radiating charm never feels put-upon, either. If his upper-class, 1920s British character, Paul, sat next to you at a bar, you wouldn’t believe your luck. It’s a sterling performance in a too-tentative drama.
O’Connor is paired with Odessa Young, another rising star, who plays Jane, a servant of his neighbors’ the Nivens (Colman and Firth) and whom Paul is having an illicit fling with. The film is really her story, of how a life of abandonment, passion and tragedy turned Jane into the person she always dreamt of being: It’s the high cost of autonomy in 1924.
Trapped by her social station — she was given the name Jane Fairchild at the orphanage and has no family — the sexy relationship allows her to see a glimmer of a hopeful future, even if Paul will never marry her. We meet two Janes: the hair-in-a-bun, buttoned-up, whispering maid, and the naked, literature-obsessed fairy she becomes when she’s alone with her man. Young’s transformation is entrancing.
But her character’s fascinating voice is often stifled by the film’s obsession with pretty imagery.
Director Eva Husson’s film is a sensual, esoteric “Downton Abbey” type, but without the emotional storms that are required of a TV drama. You want more volume here. At times, “Mothering Sunday” is so quiet, so lost in reverie, that it can feel like watching a cloud on a nice day. Clouds are lovely, but their only arc is moving from one horizon to another at a constant pace. Clouds please; they don’t compel.
Husson amps up the tension in some scenes with nakedness. The actors spend much of the movie in the buff, but it’s classy nudity. Husson’s last film in Toronto was “Bang Gang,” a French picture about teens who form an after-school orgy club. That one wouldn’t be considered classy anywhere outside the Red Light District.
As for Firth, Colman and Jackson? They play their small parts well, and there isn’t much to say about them. But it speaks volumes that three Oscar winners are outshone by two white-hot youngsters.