By John Corrado

★★★ (out of 4)

The 2023 Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 7th to 17th, more information on tickets and showtimes can be found right here.

An elderly women sits on a couch in a furniture store and refuses to leave. This is the curiosity-piquing premise behind Swedish director Niclas Larsson’s feature debut Mother, Couch, a character-driven dramedy that nicely balances its more absurdist, surrealist touches with a grounded exploration of the dynamics between estranged siblings and their mother.

The opening title card tells us that it all started with a search for a dresser. The story begins with son David (Ewan McGregor) rushing to Oakwoods, a sprawling furniture store complete with furnished showrooms that is like a family-run version of IKEA, to meet his older brother Gruffudd (Rhys Ifans) and pick up their mother (Ellen Burstyn). But she has plopped herself down on a couch upstairs, and won’t get up, forcing her three adult children to find a solution.

David is the youngest, but is left to carry the brunt of this; Gruffudd is simply relishing in the attention of the store’s young manager Bella (an enchanting Taylor Russell), while older sister Linda (Lara Flynn Noyle) only wants to call 911 to have mom forcibly removed from the store. Larsson’s screenplay, which was adapted from a book by Jerker Virdborg, finds its dramatic heft in exploring how each of these siblings respond to the crisis at hand.

The film’s performances elevate the inherently quirky material. Burstyn, a screen legend, is great as the titular mom on the sofa, including a standout monologue; she is not a warm and fuzzy maternal figure, but rather a resentful matriarch who almost dares her children to abandon her. McGregor grounds the film with his deeply poignant work, trying to balance being a good son with being a good father.

For me, the most ingenious aspect of Larsson’s film lies in the increasing strangeness of his vision, which is the very thing that might lose some audiences. Larsson shows skill in how he builds a unique, increasingly surrealistic tone that just keeps creeping up on you. The film becomes somewhat heady in its last act with a deeper IKEA-as-purgatory metaphor, and Larsson does a fine job of easing us into it in a way that makes these tonal shifts work.

The film has an almost play-like quality to it, and I don’t mean that in a pejorative way; it only enhances the at times dreamlike quality of it. The store itself, which is brought to the screen through captivating production design, becomes a thrilling set for the actors to perform on. This a solid directorial debut from Larsson, that unfolds with such a unique feeling.

Public Screenings: Saturday, September 9th, 2:30 PM at Royal Alexandra Theatre; Monday, September 11th, 12:30 PM at Scotiabank Theatre; Sunday, September 17th, 3:30 PM at Scotiabank Theatre