Women have occupied the pop space as never before over the past few decades: the icy misery of later Taylor Swift; the coastal reverie of Lana Del Rey; the sleek elation of Dua Lipa; the angularity of Charli XCX; whatever nouns and adjectives you wish to attach to Lady Gaga. And on and on.
A thousand PhD theses, I’m certain, are being written on the phenomenon right now. The myriad heiresses of Madonna present a fecundity of intellectual inspiration for those disentangling mass culture. Back in 2018, Brady Corbet, with the assistance of Natalie Portman as a damaged icon, investigated the phenomenon in the bewitching Vox Lux. Now David Lowery has a crack with a project that is guaranteed to win as many obsessive devotees as it generates puzzled sceptics.
Anne Hathaway (having a year of it, with this, The Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada 2) delivers her best performance yet as Mother Mary, a middle-aged star seeking revitalisation after suffering a peculiar trauma on stage. Her solution is to go back to her roots. On a night seething with pathetic fallacy – forked lightning and blasting rain – she meets up with Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), a fashion designer who assisted in the early days, and begins discussions about a new dress for the coming tour.
It becomes immediately clear Sam has not forgiven Mary for abandoning her after the two collaborated on the star’s quasi-religious iconography. Indeed, the designer is positively poisonous in her ironic disdain. “I wouldn’t want to break my streak of not listening to your music,” she says when her former friend suggests playing a new track.
READ MORE
Coel, the English star of Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You, is a master of creative venom. Inclining nose to the sky, eyes apparently unblinking, she speaks to the star as a Victorian great-aunt might address a prodigal relative returning from decades of dissipation. Mother Mary, regal on stage, seems flattened, scared, bewildered.
Much of the promotional material suggests a production on a grand scale. Lowery is, indeed, the director of extravagances such as The Green Knight, but, with A Ghost Story in 2017, he also delivered the most minimalist of supernatural yarns.
The current project is not quite so stripped down, but its first half is mostly taken up with Mary and Sam scowling meaningfully in an isolated barn. The two actors exploit complementary energies to make the most of that potentially claustrophobic arrangement. This is a power struggle between passivity and aggression.
[ Michelle Pfeiffer: The movie queen reinventing herself as a small-screen starOpens in new window ]
As we move into the second half Lowery again indulges his taste for the obtuse macabre. The two are, it transpires, linked by association with a ghostly red fabric that Mary, at a seance in Dublin (of all places), sees conjured into spooky reality by an eccentric fan (FKA Twigs). Does this wispy scarlet spirit represent the enmity between the old friends? This is far too awkward a film to allow such an uncomplicated solution.
That stubborn murkiness is certain to put some audiences off. Featuring spooky, slippery songs by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX and FKA Twigs – now the plausible sound of worldwide success – Mother Mary is not revealing its secrets without a struggle. The film is about the cost of success. It is about the emptiness of fame. It is about the companionship of women (in small groups and in vast stadiums).
Those themes are expounded with an invention and wit that add bounce to a film draped in rich, oil-painterly gloom. Approach with the most open of minds.
In cinemas from Friday, April 24th
