‘Mother, Couch’: Toronto Review

Dir: Niclas Larsson. US. 2023. 96mins

In Niclas Larsson’s disorienting, uneven debut, Ewan McGregor stars as a middle-aged man who fears he is losing his mind — or maybe he just has a difficult mother. Based on the Jerker Virdborg novel, Mother, Couch looks like a domestic drama but plays like a psychological horror film, with McGregor’s put-upon character and his distant siblings locking horns with their stubborn mother (Ellen Burstyn) after she inexplicably refuses to get up off a couch in a furniture store. The Swedish writer-director turns a seemingly straightforward tale of a dysfunctional family into something surreal and unsettling as this peculiar standoff grows increasingly bizarre. But, despite superb performances, the audacious tonal shifts and fantastical leaps rarely result in a convincingly mad portrait of prickly child-parent relationships. 

McGregor nearly sells the picture’s unconvincing leaps into the phantasmagorical

Mother, Couch premieres at Toronto, with Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell, Lara Flynn Boyle and F. Murray Abraham rounding out the impressive ensemble. Larsson previously made a series of short films, including The Magic Diner and its sequel, both starring Alicia Vikander. A fascinating premise and an engaging cast should entice buyers, although the film’s strangeness may curb theatrical prospects — especially considering that another idiosyncratic examination of a mother’s stranglehold on her son, Beau Is Afraid, disappointed at the box office.

David (McGregor), the youngest of three children, discovers that his unnamed mother (Burstyn) has visited a furniture store and sat down on a green couch, electing to stay there rather than attend a birthday party for David’s daughter. Confused, David’s older half-siblings Gruffudd (Ifans) and Linda (Boyle) — each of them with a different father — check in on their mum, concerned that her mental state is deteriorating. Unsure what to do, the children debate different options, and long-festering resentments between them slowly emerge.

Christopher Bear’s menacing electronic score creates a mood of unease, suggesting that Mother, Couch will be a thriller or horror film. While that is not technically accurate, Larsson treats the story as if a jump scare could be happening at any moment, leaving the mother’s behaviour teasingly enigmatic. Wearing a permanent scowl, Burstyn plays this woman as disapproving and withholding, her comments sometimes nonsensical, which only further supports Linda’s contention that she needs to be looked at by professionals — a course of action that David, who is the closest to his mother, will not support.

Mother, Couch focuses primarily on David, who is having a terrible day in several regards. Beyond his mother’s odd refusal to get off the couch, he is late for his daughter’s party, endlessly frustrating his wife Anne (Lake Bell), who keeps angrily calling for updates. As for Gruffudd and Linda, David has tried to be a part of their lives but has constantly been rejected since childhood. Between Bear’s score and Carla Luffe’s sometimes intentionally choppy editing — certain scenes simply end in the middle without warning, nervously jumping to the next sequence — David is depicted as a son, father and husband always trying to do his best, forever considering himself a disappointment. McGregor externalises the character’s growing stress with incredible force, hinting that David might snap at any moment. 

Too often, Larsson overdoes the picture’s assault. Of course, that is partly the point, the writer-director placing us inside David’s anguished mindset so that we feel his shredded nerves and dwindling sanity. Mother, Couch’s sound design emphasises the clatter of hammering and the incessant ringing of a telephone, while cinematographer Chayse Irvin lingers on a bloody wound or places the camera in such a way that, in one scene, David’s reckless driving seems frighteningly frantic. There is no slow-burn subtly to David’s unravelling, off-kilter world, and the constant bludgeoning irritates as much as it intrigues. 

The cast are all on the same heightened wavelength, with Boyle especially poisonous as the estranged daughter who wants nothing to do with her mother. As Bella, the flirty, nosy furniture store employee taking in this family’s psychodrama, Taylor Russell never quite hooks into her character’s disturbing directness, while F. Murray Abraham (in two roles) dials up his characters’ quirkiness in such a way that they do not have much connection to reality. Much better is Ifans as a longtime screwup whose immaturity has kept him from having to worry about his ailing mother — and, as a result, put more of the burden on David. 

In its final reels, Mother, Couch aspires to grand dramatic metaphors that don’t feel earned. McGregor nearly sells the picture’s unconvincing leaps into the phantasmagorical, he and Burstyn making their characters’ fraught relationship weirdly riveting. The film’s bolder gambits ultimately don’t work, but like this impossible mother, you will not want to get up out of your seat until you see how the whole thing plays out.