This review was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.To get it out of the way, there is an inescapable element of writer-director Niclas Larsson’s debut feature Mother, Couch that feels increasingly similar to Beau is Afraid.
The precise reasons about why will require being rather coy, but there is a shared interest the two have when it comes to psychological reflections on childhood trauma connected to a matriarch.
However, where that film saw Ari Aster put himself and Joaquin Phoenix on trial, this one lacks any deeper exploration or self-reflection.
Based on the novel Mamma i Soffa by Jerker Virdborg, it is a film that starts out strongly with a silly sense of uncertainty that is good fun only to slowly but surely bury any complexity with a bluntly wielded narrative shovel.
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