Director David Lowery is not exactly known for broad films that appeal to the masses. So there’s some irony in the fact that Mother Mary is – on paper – Lowery’s most commercial film. It features Anne Hathaway as a pop star, a soundtrack from Charli XCX and FKA Twigs, stunning gowns, and centers on the dissolution of a female friendship. It’s appealing and relatable in concept, but surprisingly, Mother Mary may turn out to be Lowery’s most polarizing film yet.
I’m firmly on the side that loved Mother Mary, but like 2025’s The Last Testament of Ann Lee, this is not a film I’d recommend to everyone.
The film opens with pop star Mary (Hathaway) frantically hopping on a plane and arriving on the doorstep of her old friend and creative collaborator Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel). Mary looks on edge and twitchy, like she hasn’t slept or eaten a meal in days, and begs Sam to create a new look for her big tour kickoff. There are a few catches – firstly, the tour begins in 5 days. Secondly, Sam and Mary haven’t been on speaking terms in a decade, a result of Mary deciding to collaborate with someone else for her design needs.
The first 45 minutes of Mother Mary are fairly grounded. Two powerhouse performers sit in a barn and play a game of cat-and-mouse; Mary clearly has an ulterior motive for her visit, and Sam’s pride is too injured for her to show a hint of interest. But as they dance around the subject of What is Really Going On, Mary surfaces the story of an entity that both haunts her and connects her to Sam.
Mother Mary and The Green Knight stand as polar opposite films in their energy and scope. The Green Knight feels incredibly masculine, ancient, and vast – spanning years, many miles, and a menagerie of other-worldly characters. Mother Mary is entrenched in femininity, modernity, and is shockingly bare: the kind of film that would translate to a stage play with ease, using only a few simple sets. But between them both I felt a connective tissue. They both feel, at their bones, like folklore tales. They dip into horror and surreal atmospheres; they’re equally moody, compelling mixtures of warm character moments and steely chill. In giving us something that feels spiritually related to The Green Knight but also lives on another end of an invisible spectrum, Lowery has created something entirely new.
When you talk about what works best in Mother Mary, it’s always going to come down to the performances from Hathaway and Coel. Hathaway inhabits the role of a pop star sensation exactly as effortlessly as you’d expect her to, channeling the likes of Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, and more. Her physical performance is perhaps the most notable: she does an exorcist-like dance in the film that she spent months preparing for, and that effort pays off. But she also masterfully embodies the role in a wispy, shell-of-a-person sort of way. Mary is hanging on by a thread, having been hollowed out and torn apart by the relentless worship and scrutiny of the masses.
Coel, meanwhile, does almost invisible work to make Sam a character you root for. Sam is bitter, closed off, and hurt by the way their relationship ended. It’s like walking into a fight that’s been going on for hours and just seeing the injured party stewing to themselves without the context of everything that preceded it. A character so guarded yet still playful, commanding, and vulnerable is almost hard to imagine in the hands of anyone else. Coel and Hathaway’s chemistry constantly flirts across several boundaries – lifelong friends, professional collaborators, frenemies, lovers? – in a way that makes the “two people sitting in a room” format sing where it so often sinks.
That said, Mother Mary stumbles in its third act. The folktale resolution itself isn’t the problem – it’s the trappings around it. Lowery dials up the warmth too abruptly: brighter music, tidier emotional outcomes, a cloying sense of everything clicking into place. For a film that spent two acts reveling in its own messy and moody ambiguity, the sudden shift feels less like catharsis and more like a concession.
But still, if you’re up for something a little different, I can promise you this: Mother Mary is unlike anything you’ve seen before. And it lingers the way the best folklore does – unresolved, a little unsettling, and impossible to fully shake.