'Mother, Couch' review: A surreal family clash is a strange ride

Whether it tickles your absurdist heart or tests your sense of narrative logic, there is one incontestable fact about the Buñuelian comedy-drama “Mother, Couch”: From start to finish, it is an original and wholly unpredictable experience. It is also, by turns, gripping, provocative, disconcerting and disturbing, and is likely to divide viewers with its dreamlike ambitions and metaphorical musings.

Directed and adapted by first-time feature director Niclas Larsson from Swedish author Jerker Virdborg’s 2020 novel “Mamma i Soffa” (“Mamma on the Couch”), the well-cast film largely takes place within Oakbeds, a cluttered, cavernous and oddly homey furniture store where an 82-year-old woman (Ellen Burstyn), wearing a 1960s blonde wig and known only as Mother, sits glued to a display couch and refuses to move.

We don't know why (we don't know much here), and the mother seems unfazed by her decision to stay there. But really it's just a springboard for her middle-aged children — troubled David (Ewan McGregor), cheerful Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) and hostile, chain-smoking Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) — to reunite and figure out how to get their defiant mother out of there before the shop closes, perhaps forever.

Saleswoman Bella (“Waves”’s) — the daughter, we’re told, of Oakbeds’ erratic twin owners Marcus and Marco (F. Murray Abraham, in a dual role) — acts as a kind of heart or conscience for the film as she tries to help David and his brothers solve their puzzle. But her behavior and motives soon become as nonlinear as so many other aspects of the story. That’s not a bad thing; it just adds to the film’s deeply surreal and eccentric quality.

The three estranged half-siblings (each of whom had a different father) share a deeply troubled family history, not the least of which is that of their difficult mother. Now that David, Gruffudd and Linda are together, they may have a small chance to repair their fractured relationship. But David has been hurt, and in a purgative speech he attempts to come clean about some things, particularly the unanswered letters he wrote to his older brother and sister as a child. It's a heartbreaking scene, and McGregor, who is superb and often heartbreaking throughout, is especially powerful here.

David is also forced to confront some harsh truths from his mother about his own life, her disdain for parenting and her disappointments in love. If we weren't entirely sure before, Mom confirms her place as a selfish, manipulative, perhaps irredeemable force. And the legendary Burstyn, now 91, tears through her prickly part with unapologetic conviction. She remains a master at her job.

As if David didn't have enough on his plate, he also has to juggle the demands of his wife (Lake Bell) and two young children. But the frenetic moments he spends with them, away from his mother and siblings, seem more like they're tacked on out of pressure than they inform or help clarify the story's main thread. And that's where the film loses some of its momentum.

As is often the case with real-life dreams and nightmares, the North Carolina-set story slowly but surely delves into increasingly strange and enigmatic territory. It all leads to a tense, impressively shot and edited climax that offers us perhaps the most direct window into the film's familiar theme (essentially, the need to let go), though much is still left open to interpretation.

Larsson handles his star-studded cast and the film's hall-of-mirrors-like actions and interactions with confidence and vision, making him a filmmaker to watch closely. It's a singular debut.

For some, “Mother, Couch” should prove a compelling and thought-provoking film, one that might even inspire a second look to better sort out the pieces of the film’s illusory puzzle. But less patient and adventurous viewers might be warned, though not necessarily encouraged, to skip it.