The first trailer for A24 and director David Lowery's "psychosexual pop thriller" Mother Mary is now online, and it looks every bit as visually stunning and inventive as you'd expect from the director of The Green Knight and A Ghost Story.
Anne Hathaway (The Dark Knight Rises, The Witches) stars as a pop megastar known as "Mother Mary," who suffers an existential crisis and abandons her tour to seek out estranged friend and fashion designer, Sam (Michaela Coel), who originally helped craft her public persona.
Mary asks Sam to design and create a new dress, but it seems clear that some resentment still exists between them. It also looks like Sam may have some very strange new acquaintances staying with her.
The movie is not described as having any supernatural elements, but you can't watch this trailer and not get major horror vibes. There's a chance everything we see will turn out to be in Mary's head, but we are certainly supposed to get the impression that Sam may be in league with some kind of dark or demonic force.
“What struck me right away, reading the script, is that you can’t ‘perform’ Mother Mary," said Hathway in a recent interview with Vogue. "If I got the part, I would have to become material David could craft with. … I had to submit to being a beginner. The humility of that — showing up every day knowing you’re going to suck. And it has to be okay. You’re not ‘bad.’ You’re just a beginner. Getting to that mindset — I had to shed some things that were hard to shed. It was welcome. But it was hard, the way transformational experiences can be hard.”
“It’s very brave work that she’s done,” Coel said of her co-star. “The physicality she had to learn in preparation for this job — and it’s not just us in [that scene], it’s the crew, it’s the producers, and so of course this day was terrifying, a little monster on her shoulder, but no one realized until after the first take. And then to keep doing it — take after take. That requires a lot of strength. Gallons and tons.”
Mother Mary features original songs written by Jack Antonoff, Charli xcx and FKA twigs, who also has a role in the movie. Additional cast members include Hunter Schafer, Atheena Frizzell, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, Alba Baptista and Sian Clifford.
Check out the trailer below, and let us know what you think.
"Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) on the eve of her comeback performance."