Synopsis

Slice-of-life look at a sweet working-class couple in London, Shirley and Cyril, his mother, who’s aging quickly and becoming forgetful, mum’s ghastly upper-middle-class neighbors, and Cyril’s pretentious sister and philandering husband.

Shirley wants a baby, but Cyril, who reads Marx and wants the world to be perfect, is reluctant. Cyril’s mum locks herself out and must ask her snooty neighbors for help.



Then Cyril’s sister Valerie stages a surprise party for mum’s 70th birthday, a disaster from start to finish. Shirley holds things together, and she and Cyril may put aside her Dutch cap after all. —IMDb

Cast: Philip Davis, Ruth Sheen, Edna Doré, Philip Jackson, Heather Tobias, Lesley Manville, David Bamber, Jason Watkins, Judith Scott

Cinematography: Roger Pratt
Edited by: Jon Gregory
Music by: Andrew Dickson


Janet Maslin of The New York Times designated it as a "critic's pick" and commended it for being "enjoyably whimsical without ever losing its cutting edge".

Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars and concluded that it was "an alive and challenging film, one that throws our own assumptions and evasions back at us".

Edinburgh, Toronto, Venice, Telluride, London, San Francisco