Members Screening: Mother Couch

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.