The stars steal the show in this low-key tale of the great artist finding success while caring for his curmudgeonly mother
Vanessa Redgrave gives a shrewd and amusingly bleak performance here as Elizabeth Lowry, the cantankerous and bedridden mother of the artist LS Lowry – played by Timothy Spall. It’s a small-scale theatrical chamber-piece, directed by Adrian Noble and written for the screen by Martyn Hesford, depicting Lowry’s life in the Lancashire town of Pendlebury in the 1930s, when he lived at home, caring for his widowed mother, devoted, lonely.
He is exasperated by her imperious mood-swings, her refusal to take his art seriously and then by her capricious decision to like some of his work – a sudden spasm of approval that is no less disconcerting than her contempt. Through it all is Elizabeth’s deadpan gloom: Lowry patiently asks her to be cheerful and she replies acidly: “I haven’t been cheerful since 1898.” Lowry himself is shown living a musingly melancholy and apparently asexual existence that comes alive with this verbal sparring with his grumpy old mum, and with hints that the impossibly exotic
London art world might just be starting to appreciate him.