Hauntings have been a presence throughout David Lowery’s artistic output – naturally in his 2017 breakout A Ghost Story, but even before that in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Pete’s Dragon. The same goes for The Green Knight and even his lacklustre take on Peter Pan, Wendy and Peter. Spirits and spectres, literal and metaphorical, are the lifeblood of his films, and in Mother Mary, the thread that keeps Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) and Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) tethered to one another, even years after their acrimonious creative divorce.
The global pop star and her erstwhile best friend/costume designer haven’t spoken in years – not since Mary ditched Sam when stardom came calling. Now, teetering on the brink of collapse while attempting to stage a comeback show for the ages, Mary goes rogue. She ditches her team without notice and arrives unannounced at Sam’s palatial atelier in the English countryside in the middle of a storm. Bedraggled and suitably chastened, she has one request for Sam: a dress that reflects who she really is, made by the only person who’s ever really seen her.
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Surprisingly unflashy for a film centred on a pop icon in the vein of Madonna or Lady Gaga, the majority of Mother Mary is a chamber piece set within the darkened bowls of Sam’s studio, with monologues so grand they might feel more at home on the stage than the screen. Coel delivers the lion’s share of them and does so magnificently, the very definition of “compelling on-screen presence” as she articulates all of Sam’s long-held resentment, anger, sadness and love. Hathaway is less luminous, but it’s in service of a character who’s lost her spark – the history between them lies heavy in the air, a current of contempt that ebbs and flows with the rhythm of their confrontation.
Punctuating the reunion between Sam and Mary are their own accounts of a shared haunting that gives a sense that in the intervening years, despite the distance, they were never quite able to decouple from one another. A relationship that once brought them both so much love corroded into hatred; an anointed prophet turned false idol. It’s an ambitious swing from Lowery, strange in tone and often wilfully inaccessible as Sam speaks in riddles and Mary stands meekly offering little in the way of self-defence.
In constructing a believable fictional pop icon, costume designer legend Bina Daigeler (Tár, Only Lovers Left Alive) has crafted some excellent looks (alongside Iris van Herpen who designed Mary’s finale gown), but it’s a shame there aren’t more of them – the same goes for the songs contributed by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX and FKA Twigs. Then again, Mother Mary isn’t really about the titular character – it’s about her absence, and what it did to the person who might be the love of her life. Meeting Mary at her nadir and only glimpsing her zenith within the film is a challenging prospect for an audience, but Lowery’s got the courage of his convictions, and while it’s hard to not hunger for more of the artistry which is so evident (choreographer Dani Vitale also deserves a nod) Mother Mary represents the sort of individual, original storytelling that feels all too rare in an industry pushed more and more towards adaptations, reboots and sequels.