From the moment the Mother Couch film begins and Dave (Ewan McGregor) hurries through a vacant parking lot, the picture “Mother, Couch” is a little dull. Dressed in these black suit, Dave strides into the furniture shop, which display antiques that are all painstakingly crafted. At the reception area is a vivacious woman called Bella (Taylor Russell), whose father and uncle (both idea F Murray Abraham) are away. There what happens is that Dave’s mother (Ellen Burstyn) was seated on this green sofa— which for some reason has great personal meaning to be—and she doesn’t get up. Dave’s brother Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) has already once situated there but been driven out by their other sister Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) who would come around soon to tease their mother off the couch. Such an opening is curious that innocence concealed of these people and this desolate location making sense these aims of absurdism is in the end rendered pointless.
Deception, horrible dream sequences followed by forced bursts of energy, and a painful moment of self forgives are all in the past, but one sooner than later realizes that Niclas Larsson’s “Mother Couch,” a depressing, nonsensical family drama, is as gut-wrenchingly dull as the fluff of the cushions. A title like “Mother Couch” draws from all sorts of wells. Most of the action occurs in this unexpected furniture store – the film blends the many different interiors of the building into one space-time continuum of an intrusive borderline that is similar to Charlie Kauffman’s use of uninspired places as a means to reveal neurotic concerns. There is also the genre of increasing and duration depressing sanity of humor which is unbidden and is akin to Roy Andersson. But more than any other filmmaker, the whole film proposes Paul Thomas Anderson. Allusions to clear cut scenes in a furniture shop which seems to be built at the eternal end of the earth moving towards angry and conflicting Westminster Bridges make you feel in “Punch Drunk Love.”
As fun and crazy as PTA’s odd romance is however “Mother Couch” is critically centerless and simply devoid of a heart, or a heart worthy of making the effort. Relations with depressed Linda (Lake Bell), who is to be Dave’s ex soon and who is to be increasingly neglected with aged Ross’s son who is by the way nine or younger are ideal.
That’s not to state that this is a bad thing; for Kauffman specifically for example self-absorbed characters getting psychological help are part of every work and even idiom. But he was revealing about Dave. He is boring and dense and shallow and passive. You don’t care about this world or any actions happening this, let alone the characters or him. Even though here, the camera doesn’t have a perspective, it can be said. For large parts of the movie, we can never quite understand whether it is Dave’s story or he is merely the most intriguing character of this barren lot.
The script is fighting back in a similar manner. Based on Jerker Virdborg’s Swedish novel Mamma I soffa, it is indeed an adaptation as most events were relocated which creator Larsson did few of. The one item that seems to reach out amongst the many and some what as matter of consumption, ‘Mother Couch’ promises to be more than that. Larsson goes beyond the veiling of the couch as a non-expressive hurdle to recovery from. We come to learn that Dave had a mother given birth to children by 3 different fathers (hence McGregor, Ifans and Boyle, all of whom played siblings yet spoke with different accents). It is also revealed that she kept all the letters meant for her siblings that Dave used to write. His case was that he wanted to get to know his brother and sister through the letters he sent to them.
By themselves, the questions raised here are simply questions; however, they do not act as motivators. In fact, Larsson does not get to what should be the crux of the film- what is it that Dave wants, until death after twenty minutes into the film. But when we do reach that point, if we decide to wait enough to do that, we are so little invested in it that there is hardly any point in it. Instead, Larsson employs creaky humor and puts in some odd bits which may work in existential Swedish works but go off the mark in America. And that quite simply isn’t cutting it.
Burstyn’s portrayal, with her on-the-nose monologues, ‘Russell’ is badly sketched in – a character who lead feet only to McGregor in-sight and Christopher Bear’s ever-cheesy, cliché of a score, which in such instances seems to want to be one of the “Punch-Drunk Love” rip-offs but is not. And McGregor, outdoing himself in this slightest of world’s, least sublime emotion, every possible choice an actor could make, goes nowhere further than that. The unusualness of this universe, particularly that it is calibrated by outer however, does materialise, turning into a nightmare ocean-scape which rather miraculously flows into McGregor getting to a river where c’mon, some form of internal healing or wound covenant must commence. Again, however, this one full rotation towards the bonkers comes too late and especially too little.
I dare you say no one and say that they have not watched a film trying to find comfort in the oppression that comes with unsettled garments with that one awful parental figure. However, “Mother, Couch” appears to be every bit as outstanding, or perhaps just as awful, as its title suggests it will be and utterly elusive in its resolution. You are better off hiding it away in the dark recesses of your mind, thinking it did not happen, not until one day, out of nowhere, you sit on a couch, spazz out and then I give up on this world.
Watch free movies on Fmovies
