Whether it tickles your absurdist heart or tries your sense of narrative logic, there’s one incontestable fact about the Buñuelian dramedy “Mother, Couch”: From start to finish, it’s an original, wholly unpredictable experience. It’s also, by turns, gripping, provocative, head-scratching and disturbing, and is likely to divide viewers with its dreamlike ambitions and metaphorical musings.
Directed and adapted by first-time feature helmer Niclas Larsson, from Swedish author Jerker Virdborg’s 2020 novel “Mamma i Soffa” (“Mom on Sofa”), the well-cast film is set largely in Oakbeds, a cluttered, cavernous, weirdly homey furniture store wherein an 82-year-old woman (Ellen Burstyn), wearing a 1960s-era blond-flip wig and known only as Mother, sits glued to a display couch — and refuses to budge.
We don’t know why (we don’t know a lot of things here) and Mother seems unfazed by her decision to stay put. But it’s really just a springboard for her middle-aged children — the beleaguered David (Ewan McGregor), the jaunty Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) and the hostile, chain-smoking Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) — to gather and figure out how to get their defiant mother up and out of there before the store closes, perhaps for good.
Salesperson Bella (Taylor Russell of “Waves”), the daughter, we’re told, of Oakbeds’ erratic twin owners, Marcus and Marco (F. Murray Abraham, in a dual role), acts as the sort of heart or conscience of the piece as she tries to help David and his siblings solve their conundrum. But her conduct and motives soon become as nonlinear as so much else in the story. That’s not a bad thing; it just adds to the movie’s deeply surreal, eccentric quality.
The three estranged half siblings (they each had different fathers) share lots of troubling family history, not the least of which involves their difficult mother. Now that David, Gruffudd and Linda are thrown together, they may have an outside chance to repair their fractured relationship. But David has been damaged and, in a purgative rant, takes his shot at setting some things straight, particularly about the unanswered childhood letters he wrote to his older brother and sister. It’s a harrowing scene and McGregor, who’s superb and often heartbreaking throughout, is especially powerful here.
David is also forced to face some harsh truths from his mother about her own life, her disdain for parenting and her disappointments in love. If we weren’t entirely sure before, Mom confirms her place as a selfish, manipulative, perhaps irredeemable force. And the legendary Burstyn, now 91, tears into her thorny part with unapologetic conviction. She remains a master at work.
As if David didn’t have enough on his plate, he’s also juggling the demands of his wife (Lake Bell) and two small children. But his frantic moments with them away from his mother and siblings feel more tacked on for pressure’s sake than because they inform or help clarify the story’s primary thread. And it’s there that the film loses a bit of momentum.
As is often the case with real-life dreams and nightmares, the North Carolina-filmed tale slowly but steadily spins into more increasingly bizarre and enigmatic territory. It all leads to a tense, impressively shot and mounted climax that gives us perhaps the most pointed window into the film’s familial theme (essentially, the need to let go), even if much is still left open to interpretation.
Larsson manages his starry ensemble and the picture’s hall-of-mirrors-like actions and interactions with confidence and vision, making him a filmmaker to keep an eye on. It’s a singular debut.
For some, “Mother, Couch” should prove a haunting and thought-provoking watch, one that may even inspire a repeat look to better sort out the film’s illusory puzzle pieces. But less patient and adventurous viewers may be cautioned, though not necessarily encouraged, to sit this one out.
‘Mother, Couch’
Not rated
Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Playing: Opens July 12 at Landmark Nuart Theatre, West Los Angeles
