Despite ostensibly being about a world-famous pop star mounting a major comeback, David Lowery’s latest film, “Mother Mary,” rarely leaves the confines of the drafty farmhouse it’s set in. There, on a stead in rural England, equally prolific couturier Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) toils away producing her latest collection, with seamstresses and assistants dotting the corridors of her sprawling property. The locale is haunting, but not haunted, at least not until the titular diva Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) crashes through its doors in frantic search of both Sam and some respite, gliding through the estate like a rain-soaked ghost with unfinished business.
With the raw certainty of a medium reaching into the future — or perhaps more accurately, someone feeling a fever coming on — Sam has been anticipating Mary’s arrival. “You’re like a carcinogen,” Coel narrates, her low, full voice filling up the room. Mary’s presence is a malignancy, a blight on the name that Sam has worked so hard to build, an identity that’s separate from Mary’s and secure in its solitude. But although it’s worn and weathered, the tie that binds these two is indestructible. Sam and Mary give and take in equal measure, wrapped in a continuum made from red silk. So when Mary, soaked to the bone and tail between her legs, comes asking for the perfect dress, Sam can only scoff. Even after all their years apart, it’s still business as usual.
