‘Mother Mary’: Anne Hathaway Croons Dreamlike Notes in David Lowery’s Cryptic Pop Star Fantasy

Alci Rengifo

Filmmakers and writers have always struggled to find the right form for telling stories about pop and rock stars. So much of what defines such an artist is contained in their music, making finding a coherent narrative trickier than most. David Lowery is the latest director to attempt a surreal dissection of the modern pop star with “Mother Mary,” a film that ranges from fascinating to downright pretentious. Lowery belongs to a recent generation of auteurs obsessed with dreamlike imagery and purposeful vagueness. For them, the more cryptic the approach the more depth they think they’re finding in the material. You’re bound to get multiple interpretations to this at times taxing experience.

The Mother Mary of the title is played by Anne Hathaway. She’s a pop star cobbled together from the aesthetic of artists like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. Now preparing for a comeback tour following an incident at one of her previous shows, Mother Mary arrives soaked in rain to the estate of fashion designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel). It was Sam who designed the singer’s trademark, neo-religious outfits. Now Mother needs a new design, but Sam is hesitant. She feels slighted by not having received due credit for her previous work. A duel of emotions begins as the two spend the night probing, questioning and looking back at their career together. With time, a darker detail emerges of a powerful, unseen force that seems to be binding both artists.

“Mother Mary” is not an easy film to take in, especially for audience members walking in expecting some kind of musical experience. One has to admire Lowery, a director who has always worked in dreamlike flourishes, for making something so against the grain. After opening with some dazzling shots of Mother Mary performing for a massive crowd, shot with great scale by cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, the narrative is confined to Sam’s home and studio. More than half of this film is all conversation, with tight close-ups on the actors. The performances become essential considering Hathaway and Coel are essentially in every single scene. On that level, “Mother Mary” is an impressive showcase of acting craft. Even when the dialogue gets absurd, like the kind of chatter a group of creatives will get into after smoking too many blunts together, Hathaway and Coel pull raw emotion out of the words.

Where Lowery begins to lose the thread is in sharing with the audience what he is trying to actually convey with the script. There is not the clarity of another arthouse pop star portrait, “Vox Lux,” where Brady Corbet used a singer played by Natalie Portman to comment on the last two decades of American history, nodding at 9/11 and mass shootings. With “Mother Mary,” it seems the aim is to explore the way pop singers become semi-religious figures, inspiring cultish devotion from fans and their inner circle. Designing a new outfit for Mother seems to be as important as dressing a prophet. There is also a clear psychosexual component. The two women talk about their relationship like a love affair that didn’t survive, hinting that there must have been more than just the creative work between them. Lowery keeps frustratingly vague, so we are left to guess or decipher what is being said.

There are some good songs in the film, as expected since the soundtrack features new work written by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs for Mother Mary to sing. Because of the talent involved, it is easy to believe Mother Mary as a real personality when singing “My Mouth Is Lonely For You” for an adoring crowd. Yet, Lowery shifts the focus from the music to a bizarre subplot involving a potential ghost or entity, represented by a floating red scarf, that possesses Mother and can be transferred to Sam. Not that the film becomes an actual ghost story (despite this being the director of the memorable “Ghost Story”), but another one of those post-modern allegories A24 loves to distribute. Maybe the scarf represents the creative force itself? The trick to these movies is that it can be whatever you see it as.

“Mother Mary” closes as an intriguing experiment that features engaging details that don’t always come together. At his best, Lowery expertly combines a visual elegance with immersive narratives as in his wonderful ode to Robert Redford, “The Old Man & the Gun” or the medieval parable “The Green Knight.” With this film he attempts to tackle subject matter that can elude even great authors. What is certainly achieved are excellent performances from its leads, who shape a tense chemistry. There is also the music with its understanding of how pop songs can be captivating in their eloquent simplicity. Sometimes there can be more poetry than we would think in lyrics that express love and longing through the most cosmetic terms. “Mother Mary” doesn’t reach that same level and meanders more than it excites. 

“Mother Mary” releases April 17 in theaters nationwide.