The Grandmothers

The 2013 Australian-French film Adore (alternatively known as Adoration) is based on the story The Grandmothers. The director Anne Fontaine said Lessing told her when they met that it was based on a true story that took place in a small community in Australia. In 2014, the story Victoria and the Staveneys was adapted into a French film by Jean-Paul Civeyrac called Mon amie Victoria.

The title story concerns two mothers, Roz and Lil, who are best friends, each with a son, and each who becomes the lover of the other’s son. Their affair is a metaphor for the comfort found with the few who know us intimately. Their sons are the only men in their lives who perfectly understand them: They are brazen, young, and beautiful. Roz and Lil’s love affairs are selfish; they steal their sons’ hearts and prevent their departure from the nest until their hearth is shattered by the encroachment of the other women with whom the sons reluctantly develop relationships. It’s a mother’s dirge for the child she loves and will ultimately lose to the world, an acknowledgment that all children are eventually torn from their mothers arms, no mater how tight her grasp, and that loving too much leads to its own set of repercussions.