Mother's Milk review

Alcoholism, adultery, senility, spiritualism, death…

Based on Edward St. Aubyn’s novel, this Provence-set family saga has plenty of themes to kick around.

Shame, then, that sympathetic characters are in shorter supply.

Drunk dad Jack Davenport lurches through the film, barking at wife Annabel Mullion, whose perpetual passivity hides… not much, it seems.

Babbling New Age charlatan Adrian Dunbar, meanwhile, is as much a thorn in our side as he is in Davenport’s.

What stops Milk curdling is mother herself, the late Margaret Tyzack anchoring the narrative in a raw portrait of terminal illness.