The internet is chattering about Anne Hathaway’s turn as a pop star. But for me, the main attraction of Mother Mary was the prospect of catching two lead performances from Michaela Coel in one week. (The creator of “I May Destroy You” also costars with Ian McKellen in the excellent The Christophers, reviewed on April 22.) That and seeing a new passion project from writer-director David Lowery, who made A Ghost Story (one of my favorite films of the decade) and The Green Knight.
Lowery’s films aren’t for everyone, however, and Mother Mary is no exception.
The deal
Pop star Mother Mary (Hathaway) has maintained her icon status for decades, performing in halo-themed headgear and bestowing her secular blessing on legions of fans. Now, on the verge of premiering a comeback show, she’s having a breakdown. The new costume isn’t “her.”
A bedraggled Mary shows up on the doorstep of designer Sam Anselm (Coel), who created her early, groundbreaking costumes. Once friends, the two have been estranged for years. In Sam’s mind, Mary is “a cancer.” But now Mary desperately needs a dress from Sam, and she needs it this week.
In Sam’s workshop, the two women circle each other warily, nursing old wounds. Every concession they make bristles with conditions. Sam will create the dress, but she refuses to hear the song for which Mary will wear it. Mary is open to any design, but it can’t involve her signature halo or the color red.
The reasons for all this will become clear, perhaps not in the ways we expect. Let’s just say it involves “Spooky Action,” the title of Mary’s new single.
Will you like it?
Sound design is an aspect of cinema we often ignore in favor of the dialogue, the visual storytelling, the actors’ expressions. But precisely because sound reaches us on a near-subliminal level, it can define the experience of a movie. Any David Lynch fan knows that the right subtle background noise turns a naturalistic story into a nightmare.
For me, Mother Mary is about the soundscape that Lowery and his team create — and not just for the arena sequences, in which Mother Mary performs songs by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX and FKA twigs. Spectacular as those performances are, they serve mainly as backstory for an old-fashioned chamber drama about a conversation that changes everything. And whether you find that conversation mesmerizing or a slog could pivot on whether — for lack of a better term — you vibe with the vibes emanating from the theater’s speakers.
Sam’s UK workshop is a cavernous barn that looks haunted. (The exteriors were shot at a centuries-old German castle.) But it’s the incessant, low-level noise in the background that makes the setting spooky, long before the plot takes a supernatural turn. Bass rumbles, howling wind, snatches of music we may only imagine amid the aural grit — these are the ingredients of a pop gothic. They kept me riveted, even when the dialogue felt stilted or the silences stretched long.
In The Christophers, Coel plays the quiet foil to a babbling McKellen. Here, she’s the talker, spewing refined, witty invective that Hathaway answers in furtive monosyllables. While Sam uses words as a shield for her ego, Mary’s eloquence is physical. We see her discipline in every gym-toned sinew of her body, and her pent-up stress emerges in a Dionysian dance routine.
The film travels familiar ground in its depiction of a suffering star: As an icon, Mother Mary belongs to everyone, so incarnating her places an unbearable weight on Mary. More interesting is Lowery’s thesis that Mary shouldn’t carry the weight alone, because her persona was always a collaborative endeavor. In a pivotal scene, Sam pulls out a glossy magazine profile in which Mary takes credit for the inspiration behind her costumes. With a palpable sense of dispossession, Sam describes all the ways in which those artworks actually told her story.
In some ways, Mother Mary is truer to the spirit of Wuthering Heights than the recent adaptation of that book was. Admittedly, it tells a very niche sort of tragic love story, about the romance of artistic collaboration and the agony of being left behind by someone who decides they’ve outgrown your talent. Viewers who don’t connect to those themes may feel frustrated, waiting for soapy diva drama or mic-drop revelations that never arrive.
But the irony of Mother Mary is that Mary is no diva; she’s too life-size, too normal, to carry the weight of her persona alone. In this gothic tale, celebrity is a phantom, a voluminous costume hiding the devoted work of many. And the one who wears the costume ignores that at her peril.
If you like this, try…
Black Swan (2010; Disney+, rentable): Mother Mary has a strong spiritual kinship with Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar winner set in the ballet world: Both are horror-tinged art films about performers whose psyches are fraying.
A Ghost Story (2017; Kanopy, rentable): Lowery seems fascinated with phantoms and everything they can represent. If Mother Mary has spectral elements, this “ghost story” takes the perspective of a spirit who refuses to leave his past behind. In a larger sense, it’s about the terror of being erased.
Jay Kelly (2025; Netflix): While stylistically very different, Noah Baumbach’s portrait of a fictional movie icon (played by a real one, George Clooney) would make a fascinating double feature with Mother Mary. Both are about embattled long-term friendships between stars and the people who help them shine.
This article appears in April 29 • 2026.
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