I wanted to like this film but it strikes me as an empty book, an idea abut time but with no place to go.
Main story set in 1924 sees the country gentry still reeling from the slaughter of World War I Several families maintain the tradition of a picnic by the river on Mother's Day and recall the times when the children played and swam in the river. They're all dead now except for the youngest (Josh O'Connor), who's about to marry one of the daughters who was engaged to one of the boys now dead.
A maid in the house named Jane (Odessa Young), an orphan who's been "in service" since she was 14, is having a secret affair with the boy and meets with him one last time before he goes to the party to announce his engagement to the young woman.
The lady of the house (Olivia Colman) tells the maid she's lucky to have been an orphan. She can observe life without having to deal with the deaths of loved ones.
Jane eventually leaves the house and goes to work in a bookstore where she meets a philosopher and becomes his lover (there's talk of marriage). We also see Jane as an old woman (Glenda Jackson) who has indeed lived most of her life as an observer and as a famous writer.
Jane's life after she leaves the country house is sketchy and the viewer will likely feel cheated. We're not told very much ... yet the film runs for 104 minutes.
Jane strikes me as a character out of time and place. Would an uneducated house maid in 1924 be this self- possessed and confidant? Were interracial marriages possible in England in the 1930s and 40s? What kinds of books did Jane write? No details.
Young is good and O'Connor is better. Colman and Jackson combined have about 10 minutes of screen time. Colin Firth plays the "lord of the manor," but no one else registers.
There's a reference to Virginia Woolf's "Orando" and I guess that's meant to be a clue. Jane is a character out of time. Time is fluid and has no temporal barriers.
