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"Mother Mary"Written and Directed by David LoweryStarring Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, Kaia Gerber, FKA TwigsRated R for some violent content and languageRuntime: 112 minutesRelease Date: April 17, 2026 (limited), April 24, 2026 (wide)
Final Thought
Final Thought
Much like its protagonists, A24's mismarketed Mother Mary struggles to find common ground between its dual existences as an art film and a chamber drama.
Much like its protagonists, A24's mismarketed Mother Mary struggles to find common ground between its dual existences as an art film and a chamber drama.
Rating
Rating
★★★ / 5
★★★ / 5
Logline
Logline
From A24:
Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer Sam Anselm on the eve of her comeback performance.
Review: Anne Hathaway is The Moment
Review: Anne Hathaway is The Moment
Charli XCX has become a bit oversaturated. I think even her most diehard fans would agree to a certain extent. Since brat, she has kept a nonstop presence in the entertainment-sphere, transitioning to acting, composing film soundtracks, and even visitng the Criterion Closet, which, to her credit, has given her the most fame she’s ever experienced in her career. It also gave me the space to grow to like her and her music, then become annoyed with it all over again.
Her relation to Mother Mary, the new A24 film from The Green Knight director David Lowery, stops at her contributions to the film’s original soundtrack, but as I read the film, I also see great similarity between it and The Moment, a film starring and conceptualized by XCX, released by A24 less than 3 months ago.
Mother Mary follows its titular character, played by Anne Hathaway in her first of five projects being released this year after not appearing in anything since 2024, as she is preparing for her first performance since a bizarre harness accident. She finds herself at the studio of Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), her former stylist, personal designer, best friend, and possible love interest. The film is then focused on what happened between them and the emotions that connect these two women, these two artists whose work and love for each other are inexplicably intertwined.
One of my multiple reads of this film (frankly because of it’s multiple identities) is that it’s kind of performance art about performance. Similar to The Testament of Ann Lee, one of my favorite films from last year, there’s a sort of fusion of choreography into the story outside of musical numbers. In one particular sequence, we see Mother Mary in several moments, all immediately before or after her performing on stage, and the dance choreography proved to be more effective at communicating that breakdown for me than words would have.
Though I do not feel all parts of the film (that I will discuss momentarily) come together in the smoothest of manners, I will say its artistic depiction of the effect of overwhelm on an artist is one of its standout elements and is more potent than anything I remember Charli trying to say with The Moment.
My primary issue with Mother Mary is that it is not the movie that was marketed. Coming into Mother Mary, to put it simply, I expected camp and c*nt. Between the ornate costumes, glitzy stage design, and the basic concept of the Princess of Genovia as a pop star, I was prepared for Mother Mary to become a staple of gay guy music video night for years to come. The primary thing I forgot was that I was going to be watching a David Lowery movie.
Lowery’s films are often more poetic in their assembly than they lead on, meaning that he’s more focused on the power of the image and the association of an image to another - that style works amazingly for his 2017 film A Ghost Story. They are monologue and metaphor heavy - I enjoyed 2021’s The Green Knight, but not before I consulted my AP Art History notes - leading to ornate, flowery prose that thinks it requires dissection. Due to that, it’s clear that Mother Mary thinks highly of itself as a film, but there are a few too many cracks in its foundation for that insistence to be deserved.
I thought we were getting something akin to Lurker (2025, dir. Russell) or a sapphic The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, dir. Minghella) with a Lady Gaga stand in… The Talented Ms. Gaga, if you will. Instead, we got The Moment à la A Ghost Story.
The first half (the monologue half) is possibly the most jarring because it is two things that most films would never want their first half to be: slow and quiet. After the opening performance/“I feel her coming” scene, there’s about a 25-minute stretch where our two main characters do nothing but talk non-specifically about their past. It culminates in Hathaway’s Mother Mary showcasing new choreography with no backing track (a scene that I so wish was a oner instead of the jumble of an edit that is presented).
I don’t have a problem with slow and quiet, nor do I have a problem with the hyper-theatricality Lowery employs in this early portion of the story (in fact, it’s one of the stylistic elements of this and his other films that I prefer), but I couldn’t help but feel trapped. I have been riveted by many a chamber piece in the past, but I am rarely moved when films aren’t honest with themselves (and thus its audience) about what they are.
Michaela Coel in "Mother Mary"
I was fortunately interested in Hathaway and Coel’s relationship enough to appreciate those quiet moments by the end, but I was unfortunately starting to get annoyed until the second half.
The second half then becomes something more similar to Lowery’s previous work: surreal, metaphorical, and heavily symbolic. In this, you have movement-heavy montages, dream sequences, and the reoccurrence of this red fabric meant to represent an ambiguous divine feminine spirit. I rather enjoyed this part of the film because it allowed Lowery’s direction to shine - a skill of his I’ve always thought was better than his writing. The film becomes unique in this half and will please any fans of dissecting imagery or the color red.
The problem with these two disparately toned and styled halves is that there is no bridge between the two. It felt like a switch flipped rather than the story developed. FKA Twigs' scene is that marker. It feels out-of-nowhere and only earns its context in the second half, never in the first.
A note on the divine feminine spirit: Though I understand (and mostly enjoy) its place in this story, I can’t help but wonder if the ambiguity of the characters’ reception of the spirit is only present because Lowery is a man. Neither Mary nor Sam can put words to what they both experienced, and they truly only understand that it happened because of their ties to each other. From a writing perspective, I’m curious if a female writer might’ve been able to pinpoint that feeling more precisely.
Anne Hathaway in "Mother Mary"
I liken it to an aspect of Mother Mary’s character and how it’s easier for her in moments to express herself through movement when she can’t find words. In Lowery’s case, though, the words aren’t missing because of a deeply felt, inexplicable feeling, it feels like they’re missing because they were never there to begin with.
I’d say the same thing of the homoerotic, and more broadly queer, elements of the story. It’s clear that these characters were once (and possibly still are) in love, but the film almost feels unable to go the distance with that, and chooses to lean more into the surreal grotesque. Hopefully this isn’t an original thought in the year of our lord 2026, but a straight white man might not be the best writer for an interracial, sapphic, homoerotic friendship. The pieces of the puzzle are all there, but another writer (Michaela Coel is quite literally right there) might’ve been able to add the nuance to make everything fit smoothly.
My favorite part of this film is Michaela Coel’s performance. She has a quiet, eerily calm delivery for most of her lines that all at once soothed, interested, and chilled me. A lot of the flowery prose I mentioned earlier is siphoned through her, but she performs it with the confidence of a Shakespeare actor (quite necessarily as the dialogue’s meaning is as obfuscated by its ornate language as Shakespeare’s at times). She carries a strong presence in the early half of the film, even dominating certain scenes and sequences through potent, albeit excessive, monologues, but once the story focuses itself on Mother Mary’s psyche, Coel almost disappears. It’s clear that Mary’s character is the one that needs to change, but I still would’ve liked more of Coel on screen.
Anne Hathaway is committed in this role, thought I’m not sure if I fully buy her as a pop star. She plays the quiet moments very well, and the vocal and dance training is evident, but the performance scenes felt lacking in stage presence from her. The camera movements try to make up for it, but I wish those scenes, and Hathaway in them, didn’t feel so still.
In all, Mother Mary feels a bit confused about what it wants to be. It could be The Moment writ surreal, or it could be a drama about being haunted by homoeroticism, but the chamber piece about a complicated homoerotic friendship doesn’t fully coalesce with the arthouse exploration of the tolls of fame. In the words of Niecy Nash, those continents (unfortunately) don’t meet.
Viewed on 4/13/26 at press screening
Published on 4/14/26
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