A couple of years ago in a charity shop in Harrogate I came across a DVD of an Italian film called Mid-August Lunch, the first film directed by actor/screenwriter Gianni Di Gregorio. I bought it and I loved it. It is about Gianni, an unambitious bachelor who ambles through life, racking up debts and looking after his 93-year-old mother. In order to settle a number of these debts, he finds himself looking after three other old ladies in his small flat in Rome over the Ferragosto holiday. It is funny, subtle, nuanced and, most of all, human; much as I hate to use the phrase, I really did find it life-affirming.

This morning Darren Thornton‘s latest film Four Mothers, apparently a remake of Mid-August Lunch, was released in the UK. I got up early and, with high expectations, took the train to Leeds for the 10:05 screening. Sadly, I have to report that it did not live up to the original. To begin with, I should say that it was not really a remake, it was more a loose adaptation of the original idea with various sub-plots hung onto that framework.

The action has been moved from Rome to Dublin where Edward, a young and newly successful author (James McArdle) looks after his aging mother (Fionnula Flanagan) whilst juggling media interviews and zoom meetings with his publisher trying to arrange a US book tour. And I think for me that was the problem: the relationship between the ambitious Edward and his mother was never allowed to achieve the tenderness which existed between Gianni and his mother – Edward was just too busy!

The three other ladies were each the mothers of gay friends of Edward, but these friends were mere caricatures, not properly drawn characters. It was as if in the Italian original, all the characters were sketched in pencil, allowing a degree of nuance in their playing, whilst in Four Mothers they were all drawn with heavy pencil outlines, allowing for no subtlety at all.

Looking at the positives, I thought that McArdle and the actors playing the four mothers were all very good in their roles. There was also a cameo role for the always-excellent Niamh Cusack as a medium, although this seemed to be shoe-horned into the plot and again felt rather forced. Also the ending (which I cannot explain here without spoiling it) just did not work on any practical level. Basically, the plot was just too clunky, and the result was a ‘remake’ which managed to lose all the charm and humanity of the original.

Having said all of that, I do wonder what I would have made of the film had I never seen the original, so I would be interested in hearing the opinion of anyone coming across this ‘blind’.