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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MOTHER, COUCH (2023)

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Mother, Couch is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.

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DIRECTED BY: Niclas Larsson

FEATURING: Ewan McGregor, Ellen Burstyn, Taylor Russell, , Lara Flynn Boyle,

PLOT: A mother refuses to get up from a furniture showroom couch despite the best efforts of her three children—each, incidentally, from a different father.

Still from Mother, Couch (2023)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: The spanner ratchets up the pressure on poor David and his siblings, making for a whimsical-into-menacing story flow with waves of absurdity. In other words, the Beau is Afraid archetype, but with a happy ending.

Kind of.

COMMENTS: What does it take to break one mild-mannered Scotsman? Niclas Larsson’s film, Mother, Couch, explores this question, among several others. From the starting gun, however, it was clear that this was the question that would be on my mind, until it was either answered or the credits rolled. The opening scene pulls us into the awkward and uncomfortable world of David, as he uneasily navigates a run-down parking lot and then enters “Oakbeds Furniture,” a similarly run-down home furnishings department store where his mother has permanently ensconced herself, on the second floor, in the seat of a (rather expensive) Italian sofa. From there, events turn with an increasingly jittery surrealism.

The humor found in Mother, Couch is, not to mince words, a bit “Swedish.”1 Those of you who know, know, but to explain briefly: sitcom by long-suffering ordeal. (Not to stereotype this flavor of Scandinavian, but my admittedly limited experience suggests Swedes possess a heavy streak of wry fatality.) David—a magnificently middle-aged Ewan McGregor, neither the gung-ho heroin kid nor the sage Jedi—politely, and a touch pathetically, lets everyone roll over him: his laid-back-but-glib Welsh brother, his snarky American sister with permanently-affixed cigarette, and his dotty mother whose tongue is as sharp as the penknife she, inexplicably, brought with her. In true Buñuel–Dupieuxiène style, the links in this chain of events grow to such a weight as to bring David to bursting point (apologies for the semi-spoiler that answers my opening query).

Mother, Couch is soft-spoken in its eccentricity, allowing its quiet oddities space to breathe. F. Murray Abraham’s turn as both Marcus and Marco, Oakbeds’ twin owners, is a delightful two-fer of talent, with Marcus something of a David-double (calm, deferential, doormat), and Marco eventually threatening our hapless protagonist with a chainsaw when price negotiations for the titular couch hit the rocks. At times, Rhys Ifans and Lara Flynn Boyle each appear to be performing in a different film—for reasons which become clear as events progress. As for Ellen Burstyn, well, I alternately loved and loathed her, as her “Mother” character occupies perhaps three different narrative planes.

The movie kicks off with a glib bit of foreshadowing: the on-screen quotation, “It was all very simple, they were looking for a dresser. Blood wouldn’t spill until later.” Larsson positions the furniture motif throughout, with an unlikely key (given by mother to son) failing to open the half-dozen or more dressers littered around the store and the mother’s apartment. The simplicity of the premise gets things rolling. There’s hope in Mother, Couch, though it’s nearly crushed by a long history of lies and creeping irrationality. As Mother says, “You don’t stab someone in the back, that’s for sure. Not even family!” Ultimately (another semi-spoiler) she fails to follow her own advice, but I believe she tries. When she veers from this maxim, though, it doesn’t stop the first finale’s last supper, as family, old and new, gather together just before David suffers a (literal) sinking feeling.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an all-star cast in a surrealist dramedy… What begins as relatively straightforward takes a fever dream turn that pushes weird off a cliff. This approach may appeal to the art house cinema crowd but will leave most audiences befuddled.“–Julian Roman, Movieweb (contemporaneous)

  1. As it well might be: Swedish director Larsson here adapts a novel by Swedish novelist Jerker Virdborg. ↩︎
Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE APPOINTMENT (1982)

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DIRECTED BY: Lindsay C. Vickers

FEATURING: Edward Woodward, Jane Merrow, Samantha Weysom, John Judd

PLOT: Ian informs his daughter Joanne that he will be forced to miss her upcoming violin concert; Joanne takes the news poorly, and terrible dreams and mysterious occurrences ensue.

Still from The Appointment (1982)

COMMENTS: The Appointment is one of those movies that I’d seen before seeing it, thanks to the pervasiveness of memes. The film’s climactic car crash has been excised and circulated on the web as a bizarre mishmash of extreme closeups of screeching tires, unconvincing steering wheel acting, and a downright gymnastic final moment on the road before the car plunges over the side of a cliff. It’s absurd in isolation, but a notable demonstration of the crucial role of context. Restored to its surroundings, what seemed funny is revealed to be tragic, what was ridiculous is horrifically unavoidable.

The Appointment stands out for being so irrepressibly British. Not merely in its origins, with writer/director Vickers taking his first and only spin in the lead director’s chair after a career as an assistant with Hammer Films, a pastoral country home tailor made for a Britbox mystery series, and a budget bankrolled by the pension fund of the British Coal Board. Not even due to the casting of the quintessentially English, pre-Equalizer post-Wicker Man Woodward, or Weysom’s droopy voice that sounds like a Mike Myers character. No, the thing that makes The Appointment a cinematic version of a “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster is the ongoing and concerted effort to depress the stakes and make this horrific situation as mannered and emotionless as possible.

In many respects, ’s Carrie could be seen as a similar film, with telekinetic powers in the hands of a teenage protagonist confused by oncoming womanhood. But in the hands of De Palma (and original author Stephen King), the scenario is laden with intense drama; the potent subjects of acceptance and rejection fuel cataclysmic events. What The Appointment brings to the party is that classically British sentiment that says, “What if all that, but with everyone making a heroic effort to avoid talking about anything unpleasant?” Joanne’s possible supernatural abilities take a backseat to what the film considers a more compelling subject: a decent middle-aged man beleaguered by the conflicting demands of work and family. Consider that the most intense moment in the film involves a father walking past his daughter’s room, stopping outside the door, and standing motionless for many long seconds while both father and daughter wait for something to happen. Nothing does, and yet with the weight of repressed feelings and damaged psyches, the moment hits as hard as a bucket of pig’s blood.

That doorway scene serves as a litmus test for the viewer; you get to decide just what’s been going on between them, and how distasteful it is. But there are other signs that the rot runs deep in this family. Merrow petulantly complains that her husband ignores her in favor of their daughter, a sentiment he ratifies by absentmindedly complaining that she’s hogging the sheets. There’s the event that calls Woodward away in the first place, an unexplained inquest in which he must testify in place of his (mysteriously) absent business partner about the events that led to an employee (mysteriously) dying.  And that’s the say nothing of the prologue, an effectively shocking scene—that almost seems to have been flown in from another movie—in which a music student two years prior is violently attacked by an invisible force. Death is in the air. Perhaps young Joanne doesn’t come by her covetous rage honestly.

The Appointment goes exactly where it intends to, never straying from its course. This deprives the film of suspense, but it also gives it an unsettling feeling of inevitability. Ian repeatedly tells his daughter that he has no ability to change his plans, and this happens to be true; his fate is set. His dreams and those of his wife predict the circumstances of his demise. Both his own car and its replacement acquire similar damage, as if to ensure that there is no avenue for escape. Time itself is against him; moments that should pass in a heartbeat stretch out before us. Woodward is constantly out of sync with the clocks in his house, and his watch stops working during his drive (before he loses it entirely). That car crash which seemed sloppily edited turns out to be deliberately extended beyond linear time, showing every element of the incident from multiple angles and perspectives and lingering in the moment past what one would reasonably expect. The Appointment is about 10 minutes of story and 80 minutes of mood, but that’s less a shortcoming and more a choice.

The title ends up being the key to the whole film. Woodward has an appointment with death, a fact the film elides to preserve some degree of suspense (and to sidestep litigation from the estate of Agatha Christie). In some respects, that feels like a cheat, like a shaggy dog story that takes an awfully long time to reach its punchline, and with suggestions of more substantial plotlines that never quite materialize. But The Appointment has an almost noble focus on its primary aim, to capture the exquisite discomfort of watching every detail of the last 24 hours of a man’s life as he goes about it in blissful ignorance. Show me the meme that can do that.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an odd, not entirely coherent work, but obvious faults aside, it’s also something rather special, with a couple of stand-out, set-piece sequences which mark it out as a ‘must see’ for genre fans… The suburban doom theme finally manifests itself in an extraordinary, absurd yet chilling climax…” – Eddie Harrison, Film-Authority

(This movie was nominated for review by Morgan, who remarked “it begins with an eerie opening and leads into a chilling accident sequence, one that had me muttering “W…T…F……. Truly a visual wonder.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)     

The Appointment (Flipside No 44) (Blu-ray)

The Appointment (Flipside No 44) (Blu-ray)
  • The disk has English audio and subtitles.
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FANTASIA 2023: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HIPPO (2023)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Kimball Farley, Lilla Kizlinger, Eliza Roberts, voice of

PLOT: A nineteen-year-old boy lives a sheltered life of sugar and videogames under the guardianship of his conspiracy-obsessed mother and in the company of his adopted seventeen-year-old Hungarian sister who is obsessed with conceiving a child.

Still from Hippo (2023)

WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: This is a very dark, but laugh-out-loud comedy centered on a family whose dysfunction makes the viewer sympathize with a visiting sex offender. Outrageous, unsettling, and hilarious.

COMMENTS: On those rare occasions when one is smacked upside the head with such beautiful domestic horror, it pays to linger on the experience: savoring the deadpan unpleasantness that oozes a quirky charm reminiscent of Eraserhead as directed by ; contemplating the beauty of life as it emerges from horrid, gooey ingredients; and laughing your ass off at the mad, matter-of-fact insanity of a calmly self-assured beta-male psycho. Hippo feels tailor made for those happy few who can overlook sacrilege, sexual mores, and can find it in their heart to embrace a nightmare version of Thomas Kinkade.

Like his adopted Hungarian sister, Buttercup, Adam is schooled at home by a mother who has witnessed UFOs. The lad, recently turned nineteen, is called “Hippo” by his sister and mother, a pet name derived from a stuffed animal in his possession for years, and which he recently has begun humping nightly before sleep. (He does not know about “masturbation”, per se, and similarly his stepsister is wholly unaware of the facts about sex and sexuality.) As the trio go about their routines, dynamics shift as Hippo becomes more paranoid about the dangers outside the home—alien invasion and World War III among them—and Buttercup, in her own semi-detached view of this insular world, desires more and more to bear a child, preferably her stepbrother’s. A visitation by an out-of-town pervert (for a “play-date”, the drunken mother assures the group at an awkward dinner) catalyses the collapse of the old family unit, bringing Hippo and Buttercup into a strange new world.

Hippo is horror, in its way. Its depiction of a ’90s-era man-child, obsessed as much with violence as his own merits as an individual, induces both dismay and guffaws. Kimball Farley is nothing short of frightening in his depiction of Hippo, challenging viewers with his impressively crummy portrayals of masculinity through remarks like, “Quiet. You are about to witness man made horrors beyond your comprehension”, and meaning every word. I could also write that as, Kimball Farley is nothing short of hilarious in his depiction of Hippo. Such is the line being tread here, with Hippo’s aspiring-alpha-male deadpan complemented perfectly by his stepsister’s resigned deadpan (and each side glued by the unflappability of Eliza Roberts’ mother hen).

The black and white cinematography is artistic and ridiculous, in keeping with the thematic and stylistic dualities found throughout. As an exploration of extreme religion clashing with extreme modernity (vintage, in this case, as Hippo relishes a particular—and violent—new game on his N64), Rapaport shows a societal decay through a mercifully semi-detached lens. I laughed heartily, particularly at the finale’s Genesis punchline, and only felt comfortable so doing because I knew the crowd I was watching alongside. Hippo is not for the easily offended: a bouncy-dark vision with the kind of happy ending that only a Henry Spencer could relish.

Listen to our interview with star and Director of Photography William Babcock.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an exceedingly strange, quirky film meant to provoke, like the incestuous subtext of The Royal Tenenbaums restaged by way of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth…  a fantastically weird investigation into young manhood, one that feels like it comments on the modern ‘incel’ as much as it does on sheltered 90s kids.”–Eric Langberg, “Everything’s Interesting”

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: EXCISION (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Richard Bates Jr.

FEATURING: AnnaLynne McCord, Traci Lords, Roger Bart, Ariel Winter, Jeremy Sumpter

PLOT: Bored at school, frustrated by her home life, and tormented by nightmares that transform her dreams of becoming a surgeon into bloody tableaux, 18-year-old Pauline tries to solve her issues by herself, with unexpected consequences.

Still from Excision (2012)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Excision is a character study focusing on one very screwed-up young woman, but the film delicately walks the line between making her behavior fancifully quirky and disturbingly repellent. The distinctive point-of-view, excellent acting by the two leads, and an ending that earns its dropped jaws all make this one to remember.

COMMENTS: By now, the sullen teen girl with no f’s to give has become a trope unto itself. From Daria to Wednesday Addams to nearly every character ever played by Aubrey Plaza, the type combines a steadfast commitment to outsider status with just the hint of potential homicidal intent. There are a lot of reasons to think that Excision‘s Pauline walks down this same familiar road. She’s fearless when it comes to getting in the faces of those she deems inferior. She’s devoid of shame in asking for what she wants, such as when she walks up to a boy and tells him point-blank that she wants to lose her virginity to him. And she’s dripping with snark for nearly everyone. In that respect, it’s easy to want to be on her side, to wish that everyone would just let her be herself.

But then there are the dreams, which feature naked corpses, autopsies, extractions, and no shortage of blood. On their own, they’re baroque, but their influence starts to spill over into the waking world, such as when Pauline takes it upon herself to pierce her own nose, ask a teacher if she can get an STD from copulating with the dead, or perform her own exploratory surgery on a wounded bird. As much as you want to root for the underdog, it’s not hard to see why everyone else in the film is put off by her attitude. She’s definitely creepy.

McCord devours her leading role. With unkempt eyebrows and lingering acne, she’s the girl you expect to be transformed into a beautiful swan in the second act, but she can’t help but be herself. And that self is someone who clearly desires love and appreciation, as much as she bats away the suggestions of everyone who thinks they know who she should be. As good as McCord is, the performance from Traci Lords as her mother is downright spectacular. Despite the potential for her repressed and moralistic character to become simplistic and even parodistic (and in spite of the implied irony in her casting), she is genuinely excellent. Through their committed and entertaining performances, McCord and Lords elevate the mother-daughter relationship away from the starkly drawn lines of Carrie and to something akin to the complexities of Lady Bird.

Writer/director Bates, who expanded his original short film to feature length, has one other card to play, and it’s as interesting as it is irrelevant. He offers up a bevy of cameos, several of which are immediately appealing to a weird sensibility. Moving beyond Marlee Matlin and Matthew Gray Gubler, Excision welcomes such luminaries as Ray Wise as a rather intense principal, Malcolm McDowell as a seen-it-all math teacher, and, most pointedly, John Waters as a plain-minded pastor called upon to double as an amateur therapist. Perhaps what’s most odd about this casting is how utterly normal every one of these cult legends seems. The effect is similar to ’s decision to populate The Informant! with comedians playing it totally straight. If these are the weirdos, we ask ourselves, then what the hell is Pauline?

Excision is a demented character study right up until the very end, when Pauline’s psychic trauma manifests in the real world. It works as a shocking piece of horror, but also makes sense as a logical endpoint for Pauline’s efforts to balance her dangerous impulses with her eagerness to please. They’re not compatible, and the only reasonable result is catastrophe. Many films show you the monster; few go to this effort to show you how it got that way.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…an overripe mélange of Cronenbergian ‘body horror’ and alienated Lynchian weirdness. “–Nigel Floyd, Time Out (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Tori, who called it “amazing” and said “you can’t imagine where the plot goes.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE CEMENT GARDEN (1993)

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DIRECTED BY: Andrew Birkin

FEATURING: Andrew Robertson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alice Coulthard, Ned Birkin, Sinéad Cusack, Jochen Horst

PLOT: Four siblings experience the sudden death of their parents and bury the mother in the basement to hide her death from the authorities; the oldest siblings, Julie and Jack, take on the role of parents, while developing an inappropriate romantic attraction.

Still from The Cement Garden (1993)

COMMENTS: One of the many borderline taboo jokes throughout the run of the TV show “Arrested Development” was the forbidden attraction of young George Michael Bluth to his cousin Maeby. Circumstances were constantly pushing him to pursue his urges, even while they were reinforcing how wrong it was. One of the more sinister temptations was a notorious French film called Les Cousins Dangereux, which George Michael admired for its European sensibilities. If the writers of “Arrested Development” drew direct inspiration from a screening of The Cement Garden, it would absolutely track. It would highlight the uncertainty and discomfort of his incestuous longings in precisely the same way, and central figure Jack is virtually a role model for his sitcom successor.

The art-house incest flick is common enough to be its own trope, so much so that Eugene Vasiliev compiled his own list of leading examples of the genre for this site; a list which includes The Cement Garden in particular. But even in this august company, he notes that there’s a certain paint-by-numbers element to The Cement Garden’s approach to the subject, saying that the film is so stereotypical that it “can be stored in an iron safe in the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in the suburbs of Paris.” This particular tale’s literary origins (adapted from one of Ian McEwan’s provocative early Gothic novels) lift it out of the rut, and the utter isolation of the family makes this more of a take on Lord of the Flies by way of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. But the artfully prolonged tug-of-war between agony and ecstasy, that’s straight out of the playbook.

Our focus is on Jack, a painfully immature young man who resents the responsibilities forced upon him. (He is arguably, in a literary sense, responsible for his father’s death through his deliberate inattention.) Given the chance to control his own fate, he gives up. He stops bathing, preferring to cavort in the rain in the nude. He plays with insects. He reads a fantasy adventure called “Voyage to Oblivion.” And he finds himself increasingly in thrall to his older sister. If we’re to believe Jack’s POV, Julie is constantly putting the quandary directly in his face: performing a skirt-dropping headstand on his birthday, asking him to apply suntan lotion to her naked back, and flaunting her maturity by dating an older man. It’s a depressingly limiting view, making Julie into a kind of intentional vixen rather than pointing out the entire family’s damaged emotional state. The younger siblings aren’t doing much better, after all, with Sue composing angry diary entries addressed to her mother while youngest brother Tom takes to sleeping in a crib, drinking from a baby bottle, and dressing in girl’s clothes with a blonde wig. (Julie’s speech justifying the choice is the source of the lengthy sample that begins the Madonna single “What It Feels Like For a Girl.”)

A cement garden, of course, is a place where nothing can grow but weeds, and this family has been stopped in its tracks. Given their surroundings – their crumbling house is surrounded by the rubble of other homes torn down for new development – it’s arguable that the kids were doomed long before their parents were lost. But the note of quiet triumph that ends the film is starkly at odds with the circumstances we’ve seen. The Cement Garden is the tale of young people going nowhere, and not wise or worldly enough to see the road ahead.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A very odd film… The Cement Garden is hardly for everyone (the heavy twin themes of sibling incest and death are right up front), but it’s a gorgeous mood piece, rife with tension and promise in a surreal manner you rarely get to see.” – Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by feraltorte, who recalled “It was my first weird movie. It has weird movie mainstay Charlottle Gainsbourg.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)