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Based on Shelagh Stephenson's award-winning play The Memory of Water, this old-fashioned, fantasy-tinged tragicomedy contains bravura turns by Julie Walters, Joanne Whalley and Victoria Hamilton. Their vibrant performances thankfully offset the somewhat stodgy direction of veteran Lewis Gilbert (Educating Rita). The trio play three sisters returning home for their formidable mother's funeral, who each find their own way of coping with the loss via conflicting childhood memories and the growing disappointments of their adult lives. Troubled Whalley is haunted by visions of their mother's ghost, health fanatic Walters sparkles in yet another eccentric role while Hamilton mops up the leftover laughter as the stoned nymphomaniac. Tom Wilkinson, as Walters's downtrodden husband, and John Hannah — Whalley's married lover — do wonders to support the sardonic edge of this low-key melodrama.

A tale of a mother's death, and the disinterment of childhood conflicts by the three daughters who return home to bury... read more on Time Out