This adaptation of the Graham Swift novel look and sounds lush, but the pace is so languorous your emotions never have a chance to get going

There’s a tasteful ennui and gorgeous torpor to this well-acted movie, set in Britain’s Home Counties between the wars — in which the middle-aged ruling classes are quietly stricken with misery about almost all their sons being slaughtered on the French battlefields. The film is adapted by screenwriter Alice Birch from the 2016 novella by Graham Swift, and directed by Eva Husson.

Australian star Odessa Young plays Jane, the maid at a grand house ruled over by the sad Mr and Mrs Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman) who are not making a fuss about their children being dead. Jane is having a secret, passionate affair with Paul, beguilingly played by Josh O’Connor, the well-born son of the Nivens’ neighbours, the Sheringhams, and on Mothering Sunday,...