Mother Mary
Director: David Lowery
Writer: David Lowery
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, Sian Clifford, Atheena Frizzell, FKA twigs, Jessica Brown Findlay, Kaia Gerber, Alba Baptista
Seen on: 29.5.2026

Plot:
Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) is a great popstar, about to make a comeback to the stage after a break. But just before that comeback performance, her doubts win out and make her return to her former costume designer and best friend Sam (Michaela Cole), apparently because the intended costume just doesn’t fit right. But there is something more going on between the two.

Mother Mary is a moody and atmospheric film with great performances, wonderful images, a dragging pace and a frustrating ending. I liked it a lot for a long while and then I wished it would get a move on.

Mother Mary has many of the same qualities as The Green Knight, probably Lowery’s biggest success so far. It shares that it appears more interested in evoking a specific atmosphere and giving us mesmerizing images than in giving us a coherent narrative. For the most part, this works beautifully.

Both Hathaway and Coel give great performances and work very well off and with each other. For a long time, the film is basically just those two in conversation with each other, and you really don’t need much more than to watch these two actors deliver some of the best performances they ever gave.

The movie doesn’t stay just with them, though. We get flashbacks to Mother Mary’s shows, and to other moments that Mary and Sam shared. And we get a hauntingly beautiful ghost that connects both of the women with each other, as well as a seriously creepy séance with FKA twigs giving a supporting performance to rival the main.

The story being told here is not necessarily a new one, nor one that I found particularly insightful, though not wrong or without merit. It obfuscates that fact by becoming increasingly opaque in the last part of the film, and I found that a pity. A little more clarity would have kept the film a bit more lively, I think, and made it feel less like it dragged on. That being said, there is enough to love here. It is a film filled with great moments, even if the connection between those moments is a little tenuous at times.

Summarizing: interesting and atmospheric.