Members Screening: Mother Couch
Free admission for SFFILM members.
This screening is a benefit of membership and will not count against annual RSVP allotments. Members are encouraged to arrive 30 minutes before showtime. Seating is first come, first served, and not guaranteed.
Description
Mother (Ellen Burstyn) refuses to leave a couch, which might not be a problem for her youngest child David (Ewan McGregor), except the sofa sits in a defunct furniture store and the owners want her to vacate. That is the set up for writer-director Niclas Larsson’s absurd first feature that explores the ways our families can work our every last nerve. With Mother refusing to budge, David enlists his brother Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) and sister Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle) to join him in coaxing her home. The three actors’ wildly incongruous accents hint at children raised apart from one another and help explain the overall sense of estrangement — though not how Mother wandered into the store in the first place. 91-year-old Burstyn is marvelous in this film full of droll laughs as the recalcitrant matriarch, receiving excellent support from a cast that also includes Lake Bell, Taylor Russell, and F. Murray Abraham.
Niclas Larrson was a child and teen actor in his native Sweden before enrolling in USC Cinema School. He is a three-time winner at the Göteborg Film Festival, capturing the Novella Film Award and audience prize for his short film Vatten (2013) and the Dragon Award for Mother Couch. He received a 2021 Directors Guild of America, USA nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Commercials for Volkswagen: See the Unseen and Volvo XC60: The Parents.
Film Details
Language English
Year 2023
Runtime 96
Country USA
Director Niclas Larsson
Executive Producer David Harari, Ewan McGregor, Jon Rosenberg, Natalie Sellers, Ryan Zacarias
Producer Ella Bishop, Alex Black, Sara Murphy, Pau Suri
Writer Niclas Larsson
Editor Carla Luffe
Cinematographer Chayse Irvin
Music Christopher Bear
Cast Ewan McGregor, Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell
Closed Captions Closed Captions are confirmed for this program
Audio Description Audio Descriptions are not yet confirmed for this program
American Sign Language (ASL) Interpretation American Sign Language Interpretation is not currently scheduled for this film
