Milk
Alistair Morrison
Synopsis
Milk is a quirky British Comedy about a family in mourning. The death of an 81 year old woman sets the scene for this tale about family funerals and the difficulty of burying one's mother. Or not to bury her, as the case may be.
Adrian is an unmarried, unworldly and somewhat unstable dairy farmer, who hasn't had life work out the way he wanted. Despite the ambitions of his youth, he still finds himself at home, slopping after the dairy cows, still waiting for the lightning that never came. His cosmopolitan mother, Lucy, needed looking after in her self-enforced, bed-ridden seclusion - and the dairy farm needed a man. Until the morning she woke up dead!
Set in the Wiltshire countryside, the action begins when Adrian discovers Lucy's body and ends with its offbeat disposal 48 hours later. In the meantime, Adrian's extended family piles into the dilapidated farmhouse to mourn her passing and to scramble over her loot.
Much of the comedy springs from the intense selfishness that often overcomes people at such times, as if the dead person's love can be sequestered like property, as if Lucy's love could be possessed as easily as her favourite painting.
Upon finding his mother dead, Adrian executes her pet parrot and confiscates her precious painting. Then Lucy's mourners arrive: her refined and reticent older daughter, Harriet, her clever and neglected younger daughter, Virginia, her elegant and greedy brother, Harry, her elderly and urban lover, John and finally her closest friend Veronica Price.
They all want a piece of Lucy, they all have conflicting plans for her funeral and Adrian intends to confound them all on both counts.
Details
- Year
- 1999
- Type of film
- Features
- Format
- 35mm
- Director
- Bill Brookfield 1st Feature
- Producer
- George Duffield, Meg Thomson
- Executive Producer
- Paul Trijbits, Miles Donnelly
- Director of Photography
- Peter Hannan BSC
- Principal Cast
- Joss Ackland, Francesca Annis, Clotilde Coureau, James Fleet, Dawn French, Phyllida Law, Lesley Manville
- Executive Screen Writer
- Bill Brookfield
Production status
Complete
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Last updated 26th November 2005
