An arty, but remote 'Mother Mary'

    All I can say after watching Mother Mary, a muddled quasi-horror film, is that actress Michaela Coel has one of the most expressive voices in contemporary cinema. In Mother Mary, Coel delivers her dialogue with a whispery authority that masks some down-to-earth bite. If the voice is an instrument, Coel sure knows how to play it.

    So much for the enjoyment I got from Mother Mary, a movie about a American pop star (Anne Hathaway) who travels to Great Britain to have a dress designed by a woman (Coel) who the movie establishes as an important voice in the world of exotic fashion. 

    In desperation, Hathaway’s Mary barges into the life of Coel's Sam Anselm. The two may once have had an affair, or maybe they were close friends, or maybe they shared the kind of relationship a gifted designer might have with her most important client — until, that is, the designer is summarily dropped. 

     Director David Lowery has written a movie that mostly takes place in Sam's barn-like studio, where Mary and Sam engage in verbal sparring before the movie gets around to blurring genre lines and dabbling in symbolism. Lowery even includes a seance and what appears to be an exorcism in which a floating amorphous stream of red is extracted from Mary's body. 

    Of course, the gossamer stream represents more than a color; perhaps it's a stand-in for the conflicted essence of Hathaway’s character and a nod (complete with some cutting of flesh) to the movie's vaguely defined horror aspirations.

     All of this has something to do with Mary's request for a dress in which she feels like herself. She's evidently trying to burst from the cocoon of rock star life; she wants to fully release herself.

     Somewhere after the halfway mark, I gave up trying to determine what Lowery was after. Hathaway wears some showy costumes when the movie flashes back to Mary's concerts, scenes in which Hathaway  sings songs written by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs.

     I'm sure there will be critics and audience members who find deep meanings in all of this. But Mother Mary struck me as duller than deep, a self-conscious display of arty choices that often made the movie feel too remote to connect.