‘Mother Couch’ Review – A Talented Cast Wasted By A Meandering Tale Of Secrets

People in movies keep secrets. Big secrets. What better way to create high drama?  But this does not always guarantee tension and a desire to know. There is no exact formula for the creation of desired dramatics for an audience. And even the audience’s experience and expectations can make this even more difficult. Life is full of our own internalized processes and familial secrets. Mother Couch, among other things, focuses on secrets kept without ever really revealing the reasons why. This does not have to be an indictment on its own, but the leaps that director Niclas Larsson asks us to take are simply too large to be ignored.

The film follows David (Ewan McGregor), the dutiful son of Mother (Ellen Burstyn). She is not given a name, which is sadly appropriate as she is an amalgamation of many of Burstyn’s misunderstood, angry maternal types she has played throughout her storied and excellent career. The film allows her some powerful moments, but they survive on the strength of the performer, and not on the script, also from Larsson. Mother, for reasons unknown, has decided to not leave a furniture store, instead choosing to remain on the large, green couch. Slowly, her children arrive. After David, Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) and Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) make their presence known. 

The entirety of the plot is spent attempting to convince angry Mother to leave the store and go home, but, of course, that is not what the movie is actually about. Slowly, too slowly, we are informed that David was raised separately from his siblings, as they all have different fathers. Young David sent many letters attempting to connect with his brother and sister but received no answer. McGregor does his best with the trite material, but it becomes difficult to truly engage and empathize with his plight. He is practically begging for answers that most discerning filmgoers will know long before the script sees fit to reveal anything.

Larsson seems more concerned with the mystery of the furniture store which, after the first third of the film, is odd just for mystery’s sake. There is no sense of place, interest, or solidity to this plotline filled with absurdity. F. Murray Abraham is playing twin roles (Marcus/Marco) and stops just short of actually gnawing on scenery. More upsetting is the fact that these characters have generally no bearing on where the film is going, which frankly, is nowhere fast. The furniture store also features Bella (Taylor Russell) whose character seems to only exist in order for male characters, both David and Gruffudd, to awkwardly flirt and have someone to divulge minor details to while the film crawls along.

The only character beats that are of minor interest are with David and his wife, Anne (a criminally underused Lake Bell). As she is outside of the nonsensical mystery of the furniture store, in moments she becomes the audience surrogate.  She, like us, wonders why on earth these adult children are not leaving the store and taking care of their responsibilities. Mother Couch feels very much like a staged play, and this is not meant as a compliment. It is mostly a one-location film, which is not a particularly interesting spot. Additionally, the pace of the film leads us to care less and less about the mysteries and secrets of this truly damaged family. So, by the climax, which involves a storm, as a hackneyed symbolic moment between Mother and David, prayers for the ending credits still go unanswered for far too long.

Mother Couch has many minutes of unanswered promise. Despite quite good performances from McGregor, Burstyn, and Ifans, their words fall mostly to the wayside, as Larsson instead relies on mystery, odd cuts, and purposefully obtuse mysteries. If somehow this cast could be brought together again to perform a script that makes a modicum of sense, or at least holds the audience’s attention, something great could be made. Instead, our final lesson leaves us with the idea that everyone has secrets, people hurt people, and some mistakes just cannot be forgiven. These morals are certainly not incorrect, but the journey to get there is too much of a slog to be worth your time.

Mother Couch will debut in select theaters on July 5, 2024, courtesy of Film Movement and Memory.