FOREVER YOUNG
When we first meet Odessa Young as Jane Fairchild in the opening seconds of Mothering Sunday, it is her steady gaze and utter stillness in addition to those pillow lips and flawless skin that captivates. The sum of which director Eva Husson calls “her visual charisma”.
The film’s opening line, Once upon a time, before the boys were killed, which Young narrates, is taken from the Graham Swift novel the film is based on. It establishes the action that mostly takes place in 1924 on ‘Mothering Sunday’ – a day when maids, such as Young’s Jane, are given the afternoon off to return home to see their mums. The narrative travels through Jane’s lifetime: telephones ring, church bells sound and time rewinds. The film is a masterpiece of understatement, an ebb and flow of time, chance, life and death; it’s poignant and tender.
Young is a natural-born actor. She has been perfecting her craft since adolescence in her hometown of Sydney whereon stage at the Annandale Hotel. Yes, she can sing, too. But her first serious acting role was age 11 in the ABC3 series . Now 24, her filmography crackles with complex teenager roles too numerous to list.
