Lawrence hits Venice with horror story ‘mother!’
Director Darren Aronofsky said his film “mother!” — a delirious nightmare starring Jennifer Lawrence — is a “roller-coaster ride.” Fittingly, it thrilled some viewers at the Venice Film Festival, and left others a bit queasy.
A horror story that travels from menace to mindbending mayhem, the movie was greeted with a mix of applause and boos from journalists Tuesday at the Italian festival, where it’s one of 21 movies competing for the Golden Lion prize. Lawrence and Javier Bardem play a couple — identified only as Mother and Him — living in that horror-flick staple, an isolated old house. He’s a poet with writer’s block, while she devotes herself to restoring the house after a devastating fire. Mysterious houseguests, played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer, trigger unsettling events that get progressively weirder. Imagine a cross between “Rosemary’s Baby” and the teeming hell-scapes of medieval artist Hieronymus Bosch. Aronofsky, who won the Golden Lion in 2008 for “The Wrestler,” acknowledged the movie was “a very, very strong cocktail.” Lawrence — who drew crowds of fans in Venice, as she does everywhere — said she tries in her life to “find the balance in myself” between being accessible and protecting her private space.
She said the film spoke “to the insatiable need that we all have now, especially with the internet. We just want more and more and more.” Though the movie is dark and disturbing, Aronofsky said he is an optimist about the fate of the planet.
“America is schizophrenic,” he said. “We go from backing the Paris climate (accord) to eight months later pulling out.
“It’s tragic, but in many ways we have revealed who the enemy is and now we can attack it.”