Emma Thompson plays a Croatian mother in Last Christmas. Would my own Croatian mother approve?

We had a family cinema trip this week to see Last Christmas, a film most disparagingly reviewed. I scorn poor reviews. I have had so many myself that to do anything other than scorn them would give weight to some very unkind things said about me. My mum has got a hit list of critics, who would be well advised to watch their backs at all times. There’s an element of hypocrisy in her loathing, though: she used to love the venomous prose of the late AA Gill, for example, but when one Sunday he emptied his poisoned pen eviscerating me, everything changed. He went from being one of her favourite writers to one of her least favourite human beings of all time. My mum is very Croatian, you see, and the kind of volatility demonstrated in that screeching about-turn is very, well, Croatian.

Last Christmas, as you may know, features Emma Thompson playing a Croatian mother. And this we had to see. As early as the first frames of the film, I was beginning to wonder if I should have heeded the reviews. We saw a girl singing in a church choir, and up came the caption, Yugoslavia 1999. I hate to be picky, but Yugoslavia had torn itself to pieces by 1999. By then the federal republic consisted only of Serbia and Montenegro, and definitely not Croatia. I was worried this geopolitical faux pas might see rotten tomatoes spattering screens in my mother country, but sources in Zagreb report no peltings thus far.

But this was of secondary importance to me, my mum and my daughter, respectively half-Croatian, Croatian and quarter-Croatian; it was Thompson we were here to see. For me, she nailed the essence of the role, but I will get on to that in a moment. Before that, a few quibbles. First, her accent wasn’t quite there. Having said that, my mum’s English is half Croatian, half-Brummie, so I might not be the best judge.

Second, there was an exchange on the translation of a profanity that confused me no end, undermining a lifetime of learning. They all swear terribly, you see, even mums and grans. In the film, a common form of words that I always took to mean “fuck your prick”, was translated, I think, as “nail your dick”. This made for a heated, whispered exchange between me and my mum, which other filmgoers may have found distracting. Afterwards, we decided we needed to see it again to clarify this important matter. But much as we quite enjoyed the film, we are in no hurry to see it again so soon.

Then there was the singing. Thompson sang a lullaby that my mum never sang to me. My mum gave two explanations for this. First, she has a terrible singing voice; second, she had never heard of the lullaby in question. The only thing like that she ever said to me was a rhyme beginning: “Laku noć, buhe te grizle cijelu noć ...” This, in its entirety, translates as: “Good night. May fleas bite you all night and my fleas will come to help them.” No, me neither.

Anyway, as I said, Emma Thompson manages to capture the essence of many a Croatian mother, aunt and grandmother it has been my privilege to know all my life. She’s a mite eccentric, quite loud, passionate, slightly scary, incredibly loving and very tender; really, ferociously tender.