Jennifer Lawrence's 'Mother!' dazzles, discomforts critics at Venice film fest premiere
Mother! impressed film critics at its premiere screening Tuesday at Venice Film Festival, but their reaction would hardly be described as a warm maternal embrace.
More than a dozen critics offered immediate reactions to the psychological thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky — most of them positive (12 of 13 reviews were characterized as "fresh" at aggregate site RottenTomatoes.com).
But that doesn't mean they weren't discomforted by the film, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, which finds a couple's relationship tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home.
As Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast put it in a positive commentary: Mother! "is a sickeningly glorious mess."
Robbie Collin of the U.K.'s Daily Telegraph offered a similar-sounding note of approval, calling Mother! "a sick joke, an urgent warning and a roar into the abyss (that) earns its exclamation mark three times over and more."
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter invoked Roman Polanski's 1968 horror classic, calling the film "a very Rosemary's Baby-like intimate horror tale that definitely grabs your attention and eventually soars well over the top to make the bold concluding statement that, for some creators, art is more important than life."
Of earlier Aranofsky films, he says Mother! most closely resembles Black Swan, and that it "both pulls you in with its intriguing central dramatic situation and pushes you out with some mightily far-fetched plot contrivances."
However, freshness may have been no more than skin deep for some reviewers. Variety chief film critic Owen Glieberman wrote that Mother! is "dazzling on the surface, but what lies beneath? Maybe nothing."
He concludes: "You’ve got a head-trip horror movie with something for everyone - except, perhaps, for those who want to emerge feeling more haunted than assaulted."
Time's Stephanie Zacharek wasn't persuaded, either. In a review headlined "Mother!, ambitious and dorky, is guaranteed to be divisive," she writes: "It tries so desperately to be crazy and disturbing that all we can see is the effort made and the money spent. No wonder there's an exclamation mark in its title. Aronofsky just doesn't know when to quit."
bill keveney for usa today
