If you’ve ever gotten out of a long term relationship, whether by choice or not, you’ve probably felt that ache. Someone should be here who is not, your world is different and there’s a haunting hollowness at the center of it. Something is simply not right. That’s how we’re first introduced to Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway), a pop star at the height of her career as she stares in the mirror and seems to hate the dress that has been chosen to showcase her persona. She drops everything and flies off to meet with her former colleague, lover, and friend Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) who was her dress designer and former confidant. Together they built the persona of Mother Mary, and together she needs Sam to reestablish her foothold into this creation.

The film holds these two women at the center. The entire runtime is a conversation, an argument, of their work together and their relationship. Both personally and professionally the way they cared for and nurtured one another and gave birth to Mother Mary, this diva who could share her feelings with stadium sized crowds. While Hathaway’s character is the one on stage, so much of what makes the songstress sing is in the details brought to life by the seamstress Sam. At some point Mary made the decision that the creation belonged to her alone and left, leaving Sam to toil on her own projects.

Sam is not destitute though, she has a fashion empire that she manages. In one of the most heartbreaking lines Sam explains that she realized what she was capable of only after Mary had left. That she never would’ve found this success had it not been for being alone. As the two recount their stories and the loss and pain that each felt after the separation they reveal to each another secret. They are being haunted by the same ghost. A blood red sheet, unearthed from Sam’s own flesh seems to have followed its way to Mary, a thread that connects the two of them, something that was always there, both during their relationship, and after it ended. This apparition, this personification of their work together and love for one another.

It’s difficult to have a movie where two people sit in a room talking. But Lowery manages it excellently, breaking up various points with some flashbacks, and more notably, a completely silent and eerily intense dance routine from Anne Hathaway. Both Hathaway and Coel deliver, perhaps Coel more so. Hathaway spends much of the film in a state of shock and remorse over her decision to leave and it winds up feeling somewhat one note from as talented an actress as her. There are original songs as well, and the songs are good if not great. Like many “pop songs that exist in a movie” they fail to rev the engine like The Edge of Glory does.

But Mother Mary feels deeply personal in a way that few films get to the heart of. Like a pop version of My Dinner with Andre, it seems like this dialogue simply flowed out of two people trying to come to a consensus about the world we inhabit. Lowery has said that the characters represent two sides of his creative personality, and while that can be seen the conversation feels at once like an argument over who gets what in a break up, and also how soon they should get back together. It feels at once tragic and romantic, gorgeous and vapid, brilliant and stupid. Just like a good pop song.

4/5