Some of these moments – not least those in which Mary performs songs from her ice-cool, post-Enya repertoire, written for the film by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX and FKA Twigs – look and sound gorgeous. Imagine Taylor Swift 10 years hence, in her Catholic electro-goth era: all basques, toile, dominatrix boots and halo-like headgear. Hathaway nails this fragile art-pop queen persona, while Coel’s loopier performance is at times faintly reminiscent, in ways both good and bad, of Rik Mayall.
But what’s it all for? Lowery’s films often dance along the line between the mythic and the metaphysical – A Ghost Story, The Green Knight, and his heinously underrated Peter Pan & Wendy did so magnificently – but this is the first in which the dance itself feels like all that there is.
Is Mother Mary a comment on modern stardom? Or the study of an intense, broken relationship? Or is it just an excuse for two hours of sculptural close-ups and artfully creepy tableaux? As you watch, you find yourself continually grabbing at meaning but, like a ghost, your fingers slip straight through.
15 cert, 112 mins. In cinemas from April 25