This is a goofy-ass movie, where making sense is perhaps the third most important thing to writer/director Niclas Larsson, making his feature debut with Mother, Couch. The premise is simple at first. Two grown half-brothers, David (Ewan McGregor) and Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans), find themselves in a furniture store with their elderly mother (Ellen Burstyn), who decides to simply not get up from one of the display couches. As a result, David agrees to stay at the store overnight with their mom and try to figure out what is going on with her. The young shopkeep, Bella (Taylor Russell), seems okay with this and even decides to keep David company during this ordeal, but things only get more chaotic and confusing.
Eventually, the siblings’ half sister, Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle), arrives, smoking like a chimney and angry at everybody. Also showing up on the scene is Bella’s father and his twin brother (both played by F. Murray Abraham), who want to charge David money for staying the night and the use of the couch. David’s wife (Lake Bell) and their kids are eagerly awaiting for him to join them on vacation, but he’s afraid to leave his mother’s side. Mom gives David a key to a dresser, which he can’t find, and things effectively melt down from there. Reality, fantasy, and memory start to smash into each other, and it becomes clear that David is losing his mind as he begins to take stock in his feelings about his mother, his siblings, and his own family.
Mother, Couch looks at the damage done by being raised a certain way, but it does so with great disregard for whether the audience can take anything material away from the experience, which leaves us frustrated and occasionally annoyed. Going for something deeper and more meaningful, filmmaker Larsson's work is simply confusing, offering us nothing to cling to as his characters lose themselves in the lunacy and hippie bullshit of it all. McGregor’s angsty portrayal at least elicits sympathy from us; he’s the only one who seems to care about where everyone lands in this puzzle of existence, but even that wasn’t enough to save this junk-psychology treatise.
The film is playing exclusively at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
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