Mother's Milk

This engaging saga accompanies well-heeled Patrick Melrose (Jack Davenport) to Provence for a holiday with his wife and their two sons in the villa that his Alzheimer-afflicted mother Eleanor (Margaret Tyzack) has gifted to a New Age charlatan. However, when she requests his help to arrange her assisted suicide, Patrick is forced to rouse himself from his resentful, booze-fuelled stupor. Adapted by Edward St Aubyn from the Booker-nominated fourth instalment of his acclaimed Melrose Cycle, the movie is light on Patrick's crucial (and harrowing) backstory, so always feels like the continuation of an ongoing story rather than a stand-alone drama. And in accommodating subplots involving his mother-in-law (Diana Quick) and an ex-girlfriend (Flora Montgomery), it often feels like an episode from a TV serial. But the performances are fine and director Gerald Fox ably captures the local ambience and the distorted perspectives generated by Patrick's debilitating self-pity.