Much has been made about the desire to perform art at a certain level and the cinematic effects fame and talent can have on the human psyche. Everything from Black Swan to Perfect Blue suggests that the obsessions that can occur in order to be the best that you can be has the ability to warp the very reality you find yourself in – which probably isn’t actually that solid to begin with considering how flaky show business can be. The most recent example of this is the understandably flamboyant Mother Mary, which has come from the rich, visual mind of David Lowery to give us yet another example why a life of fame should probably be avoided like the plague.
Essentially a two-hander between Anne Hathaway’s breathless pop star and Michaela Coel’s prickly fashion designer; a tale unfolds that sees a lapsed creative partnership suddenly explode into the type of hallucinogenic surrealism you’d expect of the man who directed The Green Knight. Ghosts? Obsession? Visions? Epic live gigs? Prepare yourself for what essentially is the exorcism of Lady Gaga.
In the wake of a serious, onstage accident that temporary derailed her career, world famous musical artist Mother Mary is on the verge of mounting a comeback performance – but after suddenly becoming overwhelmed during a costume fitting, she flees to the English countryside in order to seek out her estranged collaborator, Sam Anselm. A fashion designer who has managed to create her own fashion empire in the wake of their split, Sam once clad the iconic Mary in her various famous looks before they separated both professionally and emotionally. However, with a lot of bad blood running under the bridge, there’s no time to waste if Mary’s panicked request is to be fulfilled – create a new dress from scratch in three days that adequately embodies the complicated emotions that she’s currently feeling.
As Sam attempts to prise open Mary’s psyche in order to get a handle on the themes and feelings she’s trying to convey, the two got on a journey through their previous relationship in order to work through their messy break up. Sam explains that she hasn’t listened to a single song Mary has released since the split and Mary attempts to explain the details behind the freak accident that nearly killed her. However, during this in-depth post mortem of their relationship, both discover that the other has a story involving a meeting with a billowing, red, fabric-like entity that both believe to be some kind of prophetic ghost.
Are these women experiencing some sort of shared delusion due to the wounds inflicted by their break-up, or has some sort of unearthly being become trapped within Mary and can only be freed by the intervention of the one person who knows her best? Metaphor, or possession? Who can say, but can these two women find an impasse to heal their respective wounds?
Mother Mary is one of those films that feels like it has quite a lot to say, but in the telling you find that it doesn’t quite know how to say them. It’s certainly topical, thanks to the religious-style following that performers like Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga manage to command at the peaks of their popularity. In fact, some of the frenzied devotion you see aimed at Swift in particular makes you wonder that if she suddenly demanded a blood sacrifice of her fans in the midst of a rendition of “Cruel Summer” some might actually comply. But much like the strain of perfection that made Natalie Portman’s ballerina lose her marbles throughout Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, it’s the weight of what Anne Hathaway’s superstar is carrying within her that makes Mother Mary tick. But while it’s a journey that ropes together everything I’ve mentioned – plus a dollop of the phantasmagoria to be found in Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Mother Mary seem to be a unable to articulate its feelings just as much as it’s troubled title star.
First – plus points. For all the issues to be found within a film that – by design – is around 70% metaphor, Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel are both fantastic. Hathaway – who in particular is having something of an incredibly diverse year that’s seen her both yearn for Matt Damon in The Odyssey and fight dinosaurs in The End Of Oak Street – is a wonderfully blank canvas as the damaged singer desperately needing an almighty purge from all the bad shit going on inside. One minute looking as emotionally fragile as a China doll, the next treading the stage like she’s been a pop icon all her life, it’s fairly transcendental stuff and a sequence where she’s required to perform a dance routine without the aid of its accompanying song is incredibly powerful. Not to be outdone, Coel brings that probing, mischevious persona to bare as she strives to take her ex-partner apart and put her back together again with a series of acrid-dry put downs and witticisms. But while the two essentially performances are insanely strong, the film that contains them doesn’t really have the profound effect that you’d hope it would despite both actors constantly having single, profound, perfectly timed tears dribble out of their incredibly shiny eyes at multiple times.
Visually, Lowery is blatantly working over time, creating stunning compositions and repeated moments where the current action suddenly merges with the past in the same shot with the type of deft lighting and set design you’d normally see in a particularly ambitious play. Elsewhere, the red spirit that may or may not be the manifestation of their joined pain takes multiple forms, be it a pile of crimson cloth that looks like a tumour, to a billowing, angelic apparition that seeks to be the inspiration of the very dress that Mary needs. However, despite all of this, the film frequently trips up on its own metaphors, which is a shame, because both the stripped-back, uncomfortable first meeting between the two and the trippier, existential second half both work well in their own right, and yet seems frustratingly disjointed once fused together. The shift into pseudo-paranormal territory (including a random seance with a typically doe-eyed FKA Twigs) feels a little unearned and it feels that Lowery has deliberately lost control of his own story. It’s a shame, because the earlier scenes of terse discussion about the tenuous nature of showbiz friendship has serious legs and ultimately is far more engrossing than what comes later – no matter how admittedly breathtaking it all actually is to look at. Weirdly, this is the second, surreal-leaning movie in as many years to try a pick apart the ethereal horrors of pop fandom, with 2025’s Opus also delving into a memorable visual pallet to draw links between superstardom and something way more sinister.
Great performances and sumptuous visuals aren’t enough to disguise that fact that Mother Mary isn’t quite certain what it wants to say. Threads involving friendship, heartbreak, fame, stress, religious iconography, legacy and creativity all collide, but never fully merge, resulting in a film that features a catchy melody, but forgettable lyrics.
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