MOVIE REVIEW: MOTHER MARY

 

Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer on the eve of her comeback performance.

Director: David Lowery

Cast: Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, Atheena Frizzell, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Alba Baptista, Sian Clifford,  FKA Twigs

Release Date: April 17, 2026

Genre: Drama, Music, Thriller

Rated R for some violent content and language.

Runtime: 1h 50m

Review:

David Lowery’s Mother Mary is a densely packed, mesmerizing film that is unconventional at nearly every turn which is sure to turn off plenty of viewers but those who engage with it will find a haunting tale powered by excellent turns from Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel.  Lowery’s film feels like stage play for large portions of its runtime, keeping the focus on the central pair and their damaged relationship with the script offering up a series of impressive monologues for each.  The dialogue drives the film, giving Michaela Coel plenty of time to shine as she delivers a nuanced fiery turn.  She captures the screen with impressive confidence as you get a sense of her character’s pain and resolute determination to move forward in spite of the past.  Her delivery captures the lion’s share of the theme’s Lowery packed into its script with such ease that she almost drowns out Hathaway at various points throughout the film.  That’s not to say Anne Hathaway doesn’t deliver a strong turn because she’s rather fascinating as the broken pop star searching for absolution.  It’s all very dialogue heavy before things shift into something more metaphysical and abstract which is all open to interpretation.  This isn’t the type of film that’s provides a straight-line narrative which can make it a challenging especially since Lowery packs the script with so many metaphors and analogies that it overwhelms the narrative at various points during the film.  His visuals also vacillate between genres going from a single location melodrama to horror with moments of a concert film interspersed in between.  Some of it works incredibly well, such as a rather virtuoso moment that has Hathaway’s Mother Mary come off and going on stage in rapid succession, while others don’t land as intended which leaves you with a sense that the film would have benefited from a more focused approach.  Mother Mary is bound to elicit a wide range of reactions since it’s open to multiple interpretations by design which is sure to please some but utterly frustrate others. 

B+