I surrendered to the weirdness of Anne Hathaway’s new film

It’s curious that there are two Anne Hathaway films revolving around fashion, where red fabric takes centre stage, being released imminently.

This is the other, Mother Mary, and it’s a far weirder prospect than the mainstream appeal of The Devil Wears Prada 2.

Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your tolerance for the theatrical, the symbolic and the witchy.

Mother Mary is a movie of two halves: one is a full-scale pop superstar concert, musically powered by Charli XCX – and sold with dazzling conviction by Hathaway – which we keep dipping into.

The other is an intense drama about a break-up between Mary and her ex-bestie, renowned designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel).

This second element is delivered as an intimate two-hander between Coel’s rage-filled Sam and Hathaway’s broken and spiky Mary, with the actors keeping you on edge from the moment a sodden Mary bursts into Sam’s isolated country residence in the middle of a thunderstorm, on the eve of her comeback, to announce: ‘I need a dress.’

The work will be done in a dark and atmospheric barn where Sam announces that she’s entered her ‘Miss Havisham period ahead of schedule’.

But to give you an idea of just how seriously we’re taking this dress, Sam vows that it will represent ‘the transubstantiation of feeling’ (the film is packed with Catholic symbolism) – and there are a lot of feelings with a capital ‘F’ flying around.

Sam confesses she cracked a tooth hate-watching a show on Mother Mary’s last tour after their break-up – and no longer listens to her music – while the pop star aggressively dances for her former pal before revealing she’s being haunted by a red spirit now locked inside her body.

This brings Mother Mary into its supernatural and body horror elements – writer-director David Lowery certainly doesn’t feel constricted by genre – with FKA twigs turning up to conduct a rather erotically-charged séance for Mary and her team (Fleabag’s Sian Clifford, Euphoria star Hunter Schafer and Kaia Gerber are all part of the entourage, with frustratingly limited screentime).

Mother Mary’s constantly morphing identity is a lot for Lowery to juggle, but he leans into it, relishing the heightened theatricality over the realistic in a way that will sharply divide audiences.

This also means we’re kept guessing where Mother Mary will go next, freed as it as from the shackles of restraint or convention, providing an extra nervous energy and edge to the experience of watching it.

Hathaway, though, does enough to convince anyone she’s established pop royalty in the mould of Madonna, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, by the power of the perpetually busy XCX (hot off sculpting songs for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, among other things), Jack Antonoff and FKA twigs’ compelling, stadium-filling songs for the soundtrack.

She has charisma enough to command the stage, owning the film’s tracks and looking the part thanks to her bleached hair and Ariana Grande-coded delicate hand tattoos.

Mother Mary is the kind of film experience you have to surrender to, for it has the power to put you in a trance – even if it’s a lot of everything, all at once.

However, no one can quibble that it’s – at the very least – both aesthetically and aurally gorgeous.

It is an unashamedly peculiar film that many won’t have the patience for, if the critic loudly snoring next to me in my screening is anything to go by.

But if you fancy Practical Magic with a lot more blood and bite, spliced together with a Lady Gaga concert, it could just work for you.

Mother Mary is in UK and Irish cinemas from today.

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