Jennifer Lawrence

'mother!': Film Review | Venice 2017

Darren Aronofsky's latest stars Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a married couple whose lives start unraveling when unexpected guests arrive at their home.

Writer-director Darren Aronofsky wants to have his commercial cake and chomp down on some vexing personal issues, too, in mother!, a very Rosemary’s Baby-like intimate horror tale that definitely grabs your attention and eventually soars well over the top to make the bold concluding statement that, for some creators, art is more important than life. How the film’s compelling star Jennifer Lawrence may feel about this sentiment is another matter, but this is a tale that, like any number of fanciful genre outings, both pulls you in with its intriguing central dramatic situation and pushes you out with some mightily far-fetched plot contrivances. Aesthetically resembling Black Swan more than any of the director’s other previous work, but with touches of Requiem for a Dream, this Paramount release could score solidly with the public on the basis of the genre elements and the star’s drawing power. It opens Sept. 15 after festival bows in Venice and Toronto.

Venice Film Review / Jennifer Lawrence in ‘mother!

Jennifer Lawrence

Venice Film Review: 
Jennifer Lawrence 
in ‘mother!’

Owen Gleiberman
SEPTEMBER 5, 2017 | 01:30AM PT

SCREENSHOT

Darren Aronofsky's head-trip horror movie, starring Jennifer Lawrence as a woman who slips down a rabbit hole of paranoia, is dazzling on the surface, but what lies beneath? Maybe nothing.

Mother! / No gob left unsmacked in Jennifer Lawrence's anxiety dream of horror and dismay

Mother! review – no gob left unsmacked in Jennifer Lawrence's anxiety dream of horror and dismay

5/5stars

    

Lawrence and Javier Bardem play a husband and wife whose isolated house is invaded by another married couple in Darren Aronofsky’s black-comic nightmare

Festival de Venecia / Venecia pita a Aronofsky

I

t’s a powerful enough word at the best of times, but the exclamation mark gives it that edge of delirium and melodrama and despair – just the way Norman Bates yells it at the end of Psycho. Or maybe we’re supposed to hear a second, brutal two-syllable word immediately afterwards. Darren Aronofsky’s toweringly outrageous film leaves no gob unsmacked. It is an event-movie detonation, a phantasmagorical horror and black-comic nightmare that jams the narcosis needle right into your abdomen. Mother! escalates the anxiety and ups the ante of dismay with every scene, every act, every trimester, taking us in short order from WTF to WTAF to SWTAF and beyond.

Jennifer Lawrence, Darren Aronofsky Say 'Mother!' Is an Allegory for Mother Earth

Jennifer Lawrence, Darren Aronofsky Say 'Mother!' Is an Allegory for Mother Earth

"It never would have been right for my character to wear shoes," said Lawrence of playing the submissive wife. "Nature is her creation."

6:56 AM PDT 9/5/2017 by Ariston Anderson

On Tuesday night at the Venice Film Festival, Darren Aronofsky premieres his new thriller Mother!, which has been kept tightly under wraps until now. The film's press screenings divided critics — the morning debut was met with loud boos and a smattering of applause, not unlike Aronofsky’s 2006 Lido launch of The Fountain.