Okay, those who think the mother in the film is selfish ARE WRONG!
The script by HANIF KUREISHI is brilliant and psychologically very perceptive.
**** SPOILERS AHEAD ********
In some exposition in the dialogue, it is explained to us, the audience, what kind of life she has been exposed to in marriage. At one point, she admits that it was easier to just do what her husband told her to do. In those days, women were NOT as emancipated as they are today, meaning that she was basically trapped in a stiffling marriage, taking care of the kids and making sure Daddy had his meal ready by 7 p.m. She lost out her youth toiling away in usual subervient housewife mode.
Then as the early scenes in the movie shows us, her husband is now clearly senile and almost disabled. She was the one who clothed him, fed him, bathed him, and so on for God knows how long. What kind of good time do you expect she was having?
When they visit the children, HANIF KUREISHI's script and ROGER MITCHELL show us how alien they appear to the grandkids (one of them actually asks: "Who are you?" and the little girl tells her that she has an ugly face), and the children are nothing more than selfish bastards who are barely wont to invite them home (the son's wife has an argument with him about the visit.) The scenes in which she wanders the streets of LONDON, are the most telling. People barely care to help with the directions. SHE IS LOST -- literally and figuratively.
When her husband dies, she is barely shown ANY sympathy or understanding from her own progeny. Only DANIEL CRAIG's character, a stranger to her, is civil and actually listens to her.
What happens here is very important. She connects with him, rather unexpectedly, and feels needed again -- something she hasn't felt in a long time (the daily routine with her husband had become a burden). When she visits the museum and sees those sylph-like sculptures of young women, it's a way to show us what she has missed out on, and what she longs and yearns for --her youth. So when CRAIG's carpenter actually pays attention to her,
THERE IS NO REASON WHY SHE SHOULD CARE ABOUT ANYBODY'S FEELINGS BUT HER OWN. She's not so young anymore and might never get another chance. She seizes the opportunity and makes the firs step by kissing Darren. He reciprocates. The affair blooms on from then on. THERE IS NOTHING DISGUSTING IN THE SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS. BOTH ARE ADULTS AND ENGAGE IN WHAT TWO ADULTS (IRRESPECTIVE OF AGE) DO. This reaction of hers was triggered by the sudden loss of her husband. There are several ways to cope after tragedy and making a clean break is one of them. The ensuing liberation for her is priceless. In coupling with Darren, she (briefly) recaptures her youth.
The sexual encounter with the old man is repulsive to her for many reasons:
- 1. It's imposed on her (the daughter tries to make her feel guilty, and thus, she obliges by actually seeing that man, though it's obvious from the start that she doesn't like him.)
- 2. He reminds her of her husband.
- 3. The act itself reinforces the cultural dictates of the time asserting that a woman of a certain age SHOULD NOT hope for more than her lot, i.e. deal with a man her own age.
Her daughter throws years and years of so-called abuse (or lack of care) at her face, never once thinking what her own mother might have gone through raising her and her brother in a cold (perhaps loveless) marriage. I don't think the mother even considered her daughter's feelings toward Darren. IT'S NOT SELFISHNESS, it's a sort of daze (brought on by the death and sudden change in routine) and a need to make up for lost time by hook or by crook that make her impervious to any needs but her own. It's also a need to break free of the cultural moral restrictions that have kept her a bottled-up housewife for all these years and still dictate that she shouldn't have sex with a man half her age today.
IN A NUTSHELL, THE MOTHER ACTUALLY IS THE MOST SYMPATHETIC CHARACTER IN THE FILM.