The Mother is a 2003 British drama film directed by Roger Michell and written by Hanif Kureishi. It stars Anne Reid, Daniel Craig, Peter Vaughan, Steven Mackintosh, and Cathryn Bradshaw. The film had its world premiere at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight section. Plot May is a woman from Northern England. Her life has been constrained by the expectations of society and her husband. When her husband dies during a visit to their adult children in London, she has a chance to start again and pursue her love of drawing. May is quiet but when her son Bobby tries to make her sit down and have a cup of tea she refuses, saying she might never get up and that she won't become invisible like all the neighbouring grandmothers and widows. May returns to London with Bobby to the horror of Helen, Bobby's wife. May initiates a sexual affair with Darren, a warm and attractive younger man who is renovating Bobby and Helen's house and who is also her daughter Paula's boyfriend. Paula says he is a sweet man but weak. He has a wife and autistic son but lives in his van outside their house. Darren appears to share May's interest in art and the unlikely pair form an understanding. May moves from Bobby's house to Paula's and discovers Paula is having therapy because her mother didn't cuddle her enough. At a writing group organised by Paula, May writes a short account of being a depressed mother of two young children. It is a very public explanation, perhaps, for her lack of affection. Paula introduces her mother to Bruce, a man near May's age. Paula wants her mother to find out if Darren will leave his wife and what he thinks of her. May agrees, but can only avoid Paula's later questions. Paula stumbles upon a sketchbook filled with May's drawings of a naked man and a woman performing fellatio on him. She surmises the man is Darren, and shows the sketches to Bobby. He says it must be a fantasy but Paula suspects her mother is having an affair with Darren, and is angry. After sex with May, Darren helps himself to medication in Helen's bathroom cabinet without caring what they are. May offers to pay for him to travel, with her, but then seeing his reluctant response says, 'what a silly idea'. Paula