Mother, Couch, the feature debut from writer/director Niclas Larsson, is a peculiar and beguiling film. It’s likely to divide, confound, and turn off mainstream audiences. But, for those who enjoy strange and offbeat movies, this is something new to fall in love with. 

 

The story is based on the 2020 Swedish novel Mamma i soffa by Jerker Virdborg, although Larsson reportedly has taken ample liberties.

 

Ewan McGregor plays David, a man in his late 40s who finds his mother (Ellen Burstyn) unwilling to move from a sofa at Oakbed’s Furniture store. 

 

His half-brother, Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans), and half-sister, Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle), also become involved. Gruff doesn’t seem terribly bothered and is more interested in flirting with the comely shopkeeper, Bella (Taylor Russell), and Linda’s only advice is to call 911. Unable to move her, David spends the night in the furniture store, has a vaguely romantic dinner with Bella, and wakes up the next morning having to deal with twinbrothers (both played by F. Murray Abraham) who want him to pay for the couch and leave. 

 

Along the way, David ignores his wife, Anne (Lake Bell), and two young children, and he watches his mother have a sort of existential meltdown. Mom apparently had three children she never wanted with three different fathers – and aborted several more. 

 

That all might sound a bit messy, but Larsson pulls it off through a sort of deadpan surrealism. Wild things keep happening, but the characters rarely flinch, no matter how odd or loud or impactful. 

 

Larsson’s prior short film credits include Magic Diner Pt. 1 and Magic Diner Pt. 2, each based on The Twilight Zone episode “Nick of Time.” Here, again, he evokes The Twilight Zone and possibly Hitchcock pushed to his Outer Limits. 

 

David, certainly, is a Hitchcockian protagonist. McGregor plays him as a classic well-meaning straight man out of his depth in a situation that is spiraling out of his control. Strange and stranger things keep happening, but David is so damned earnest that the film stays grounded right up to the point where the couch is finally hoisted out of the window so it can sail away on a newly formed ocean. McGregor has been on a roll for some time now playing complex and offbeat characters in indie movies and prestige TV, and he continues his lengthy winning streak here. 

 

McGregor also has excellent chemistry with Ifans, his loutish older brother, who adds a fantastically dry comic relief layer to the story. Russell, meanwhile, is magnetic and endlessly charming as the shopkeeper who doesn’t seem to see anything at all out of the ordinary with the chaos going on all around her. 

 

If Ifans and Russell add a lighter touch, then it’s Burstyn who brings gravitas as the disillusioned elderly mother who won’t move off her position – literally and figuratively. Burstyn largely plays the role detached and aloof, but when she needs to bite and growl, she does so viciously with lines like, “It's hard being a parent. You know that you're doing harm all the time.”

 

Mother, Couch is a beautifully acted and remarkably bizarre fable about the tough dynamics of family and the need to sometimes let it all go. At one point, one of the characters walks through several scenes with a letter opener stuck out of their back and no one bats an eye. Haven’t we all felt so scorned, so affected by family?

 

Larsson pulls off a brilliant balancing act with a film that is darkly funny, delightfully weird, wholly engaging, and utterly original.