Mother Mary Review – IGN

The story is plenty straightforward. Anne Hathaway plays a pop star who goes by Mother Mary and Michaela Coel is Sam Anselm, the fashion designer who styled the musician in the ascendant days of her career. There was a falling out along the way and now in a time of desperation, Mother Mary returns to Sam out of the blue. These basics are revealed as the pair are holed up in a single location – Sam’s English countryside workshop – for most of the film’s runtime, where the drama can unfold and, gradually, become a ghost story. See? Simple.

But this is writer-director David Lowery, who’s given us everything from the quietly meditative but existentially terrifying A Ghost Story to the sprawling Arthurian tone poem The Green Knight, and a variety of folkloric yarns of all shapes and sizes in between. He has a wonderful knack for the supernatural and for blending the fantastic with reality while telling relatable stories in maximalist ways that still feel intimate, downright small even. And this is the area of his films that start to feel anything but simple.

All of Lowery’s usual trappings are on display in Mother Mary. The film looks incredible, as the director continues a lengthy creative relationship with cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, who this time shares the DP credit with Rina Yang. That Yang, a veteran of music videos for Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Sam Smith and Haim, is on hand to shoot a film about a pop star speaks to the bit of truth portrayed in Mother Mary. There’s a cinematic language to pop stardom in this post-Eras Tour era, and the parts of this film that become sequences of interpretive dance speak it fluently, describing the passage of time and deterioration of Mary’s psyche.

There’s also a sound underneath the proceedings. It’s a low rumbling hum in the fashion designer’s workshop, but there’s a weight to it that’s meaningful enough that I found myself waiting for it to stop. It caught my attention not because it was annoying, but I wanted to clock the moment where it went away so I could understand the intent behind it. At some point I realized that it just wasn’t going to end. Instead it builds, welcoming layers of creakiness and an occasional growl from a storm brewing outside the walls.

And so behind the camera, the technique of the film is faultless. Meanwhile on screen, Anne Hathaway’s Mother Mary is pure anxiety, living on a tightrope trying to keep a handle on her sanity. She’s predictably incredible, delivering a quiet and unnerved performance that hits its high-water mark in a moment where she performs her choreographed dance routine without music, a wildly uncomfortable and emotionally draining scene for the character.

Michaela Coel is just as good as Sam; she’s enigmatic, aloof and curious, blunt and cutting, and, most importantly, the perfect personification of Lowery’s themes. Mother Mary is a cautionary tale about creative relationships, a ghost story about the ownership of collaborative work. Inevitably one gets left behind while another has to carry the weight of it, for better or worse.

It’s an interesting concept, but one that is very niche. Indeed, high fashion is the perfect backdrop for an all-vibes “art for art’s sake” endeavor like Mother Mary. The film is fascinating to look at, but it’s not meant for everyday wear. There’s nothing terribly engaging about the story of the two old friends, certainly nothing crucially relatable for the rest of us to connect with in the way Lowery’s previous works have boasted. We know why Mary and Sam broke down, they explain it all, but the autopsy of their relationship feels secondary to the look, the formality of the film. Even when the film doesn’t make sense, the setting makes it feel right, like how a couture dress can be a gorgeously crafted work of art but also not even a little bit functional. It is technically a dress, but it’s hard to see yourself wearing it.

While the two leads stay captivating right up to the credit roll, the end of their story does get a little too melodramatic. The visual story of Mother Mary has been told in its entirety by the time those seams are being sewn, and because the aesthetics of this film are far and away it’s biggest strength, the last bits drag and the fantasy elements that had been such a bright spot start to lose their hold. Again though, that’s not what I need out of a film like Mother Mary.

You can look at it as more of a painting than a movie, which is my preferred fashion where David Lowery films are concerned. Mother Mary clearly tells a story, maybe not the most compelling he’s ever told, but there’s room to project whatever you want onto the characters and feel whatever it makes you feel. I, for one, was moved by the technique of it, seeing how the brush strokes create a whole image. But like any good piece of art, that feeling might be… “honestly, I’m getting nothing.”