Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) is an iconic pop star embarking upon a grand tour and putting the finishing touches on an elaborate dress amongst an already elaborate wardrobe for her comeback shows. After trying on numerous options, Mary remains unsatisfied and sneaks away from her team to as a favor of her estranged best friend and former costume designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel). As Sam rushes to complete a masterpiece for Mary, their broken relationship comes to the forefront and must be repaired too.
This film is one that’s chock full of metaphor which starts off slightly interesting enough. As Mary and Sam meet to repair their relationship, it runs parallel to Sam’s construction of her emergency dress; a fitting metaphor, no pun intended. As Sam struggles to to find the right style for the dress, she simultaneously struggles with Mary over their past and who is at fault for their falling out and failed friendship, again mirroring their relationship struggle with their fashion struggle. It is a somewhat intriguing way to make the dress into a MacGuffin while melding the fame and fashion aspect of the film into the character study that is actually at its heart. It has promise until a second more esoteric metaphor arises.
One hour into the film’s runtime, Mother Mary abruptly becomes a horror film with the two women revealing that they’ve been visited and haunted by the same ghostly entity. The red apparition is then revealed in gory ways that are shot beautifully and artistically, but come off as extremely bizarre within the narrative. Mother Mary’s production design is exquisite, lush, and part of its impressive cinematography and the ghost story section of the film is where this aspect really shines through. When it comes to the story however, it takes a film that was already teetering on the edge of tenuousness and glacial pacing and makes it worse. Is the ghost also a metaphor for Mary and Sam’s relationship? A dead entity haunting them and not going away until they face it and try to rectify things? Ultimately, Mother Mary never makes you connect with the characters enough to care.
Is Mother Mary a film about two former friends trying to hash out their differences? Are Mary and Sam two former lovers for whom hatred and resentment betrays their continued love for one another? Are they haunted by a real ghost or their metaphorical dead connection? If the film were more interesting, or at least more intelligible, perhaps I would have cared more to consider these questions and think them through. While beautifully shot, Mother Mary feels tedious and too interested in being mysterious than telling a story that draws the audience in, properly introduces the characters, and ultimately creates care for them. Sometimes, you can be a little too abstract. And this is ultimately what sinks Mother Mary.
Image: A24
