From the moment Dave (Ewan McGregor) frantically walks across a deserted parking lot, \u201cMother, Couch\u201d feels empty. Dressed in a black suit, Dave walks toward a furniture store filled with vintage, handcrafted pieces. At the front desk is the bubbly Bella (Taylor Russell), whose father Marcus and Uncle Marco (both played by F Murray Abraham) are away. There Dave\u2019s mother (Ellen Burstyn) is sitting on a green couch\u2014it has deep, personal significance\u2014and refuses to leave. Dave\u2019s brother Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) is there too, and soon their sister Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) will arrive to try to coax their mother away from the sofa. It\u2019s an intriguing opening, one tinged with mysteries about these people and this forlorn place, which\u00a0ultimately fizzles due to its absurdist aims.<\/p>\n
After the forced bursts of energy, nightmarish dream sequences, and a strained bit of self-absolution recede, you soon realize that writer\/director Niclas Larsson\u2019s \u201cMother, Couch,\u201d a morose, nonsensical family drama is about as interesting as the lint between the cushions. \u201cMother Couch\u201d draws from several wells. Taking place mostly in this larger-than-expected furniture store, the film utilizes a combination of the building\u2019s myriad showrooms as one continuous liminal space whose ambiguous temporality recalls Charlie Kauffman\u2019s penchant for wielding mundane settings to interrogate hidden anxieties. The type of escalating deadpan absurdity that is reminiscent of Roy Andersson is also present. But more than any filmmaker, the entire film suggests Paul Thomas Anderson. From the setting of a furniture store that seems to exist at the end of the world to the franticness of Dave, you can\u2019t help but feel \u201cPunch-Drunk Love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike PTA\u2019s oddball rom-com, however, \u201cMother Couch\u201d lacks a soul, or at least one worth investing in. From his uneasy relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife Linda (Lake Bell) to how often he forgets to care for his young daughter, Dave isn\u2019t terribly likable. This isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing; Kauffman\u2019s work, for instance, routinely features aloof, self-absorbed people dealing with their own psychological shit. But Dave, who is similarly parsing his past, is too passive, shallow, and boring to make you interested in this world, its actions, its characters, or him. The camera also lacks a point of view. For much of the movie, we\u2019re never quite sure if the film is about Dave or if he happens to be the most interesting person among this lifeless lot.<\/p>\n
The script similarly plays hard-to-get. Originally based on Jerker Virdborg\u2019s Swedish novel\u00a0Mamma i soffa<\/em>, Larsson changed and re-tooled much of that story\u2019s content\u2014those alterations are apparent. For much of \u201cMother Couch,\u201d Dave\u2019s motivations are ambiguous. Larsson further leans on the couch as a heavy metaphor for the inability to process and move on. We discover that Dave\u2019s mother wasn\u2019t the best mom, having children with three different men (hence McGregor, Ifans, and Boyle, each playing a sibling, confusingly having different accents). We also learn that his mother kept the letters Dave wrote to his siblings; he had hoped to use these missives to get to know his brother and sister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the moment Dave (Ewan McGregor) frantically walks across a deserted parking lot, \u201cMother, Couch\u201d feels empty. Dressed in a black suit, Dave walks toward a furniture store filled with vintage, handcrafted pieces. At the front desk is the bubbly Bella (Taylor Russell), whose father Marcus and Uncle Marco (both played by F Murray Abraham) …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[33,45],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy-movies","tag-comedy","tag-drama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}