It was 2017. Darren Aronofsky had just unleashed a fever dream onto the world. If you walked into a theater expecting a standard home-invasion thriller because the trailer looked "kinda spooky," you probably left wanting to sue for emotional damages. At the center of this hurricane were two of the biggest powerhouses in cinema: Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem.
Their names on a marquee usually mean prestige. Maybe a sweeping romance or a gritty crime drama. But what they gave us was mother!—a movie so divisive it earned a rare "F" CinemaScore while simultaneously being hailed as a masterpiece by critics who like being miserable.
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But what actually happened between these two on that set? People still talk about the age gap, the hyperventilating, and the fact that Lawrence was literally dating the director while Bardem played her "Him." It was a recipe for chaos.
The Biblical Allegory Nobody Told You About (At First)
Most people watching mother! for the first time are just confused. Why is Javier Bardem letting strangers into the house? Why is Jennifer Lawrence the only one cleaning up the blood? Honestly, if you don't know the secret code, the movie feels like a two-hour panic attack.
Basically, Bardem isn't just a "husband." He's God. Or, more specifically, the Creator. Lawrence isn't just his wife; she’s Mother Earth. The house? That’s the planet. Once you realize this, the weirdness starts to click.
- Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer show up as Adam and Eve.
- Their sons (the Gleeson brothers) reenact Cain and Abel.
- The sink breaking is the Great Flood.
Javier Bardem played the "Him" role with a terrifying, narcissistic warmth. He captures that specific kind of "artist" ego that feeds on praise but ignores the person actually keeping the lights on. Lawrence, meanwhile, had to play a literal planet being stripped of its resources.
Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem: The Brutal Reality of the Set
Working together wasn't all red carpets and champagne. For Lawrence, this was the most physically and mentally taxing role of her career. There’s a scene near the end—no spoilers, but it involves a lot of screaming—where she actually tore her diaphragm from hyperventilating.
She literally popped a rib.
Think about that. You're acting so hard you break your own body. Javier Bardem, ever the professional, had to maintain a certain distance. His character is dismissive, almost cruelly detached from her pain. To make that work on screen, the energy on set had to stay high-strung.
Lawrence famously had a "Kardashian Tent" set up nearby. It was a small sanctuary filled with gum balls and videos of Keeping Up with the Kardashians playing on a loop. She needed it to "decompress" because the darkness of the scenes with Bardem and the "fans" was too much to live in for twelve hours a day.
"I had to go to a darker place than I've ever been in my life," Lawrence told Vogue. "I didn't know if I'd be able to come out okay."
That Controversial Age Gap
When the casting was announced, the internet did what the internet does: it complained. Jennifer Lawrence was in her mid-20s. Javier Bardem was in his late 40s.
Critics called it "egregious." The Alliance of Women Film Journalists even nominated them for the "Most Egregious Age Difference Between The Lead and The Love Interest" award.
But here’s the thing: the age gap was the point.
If Bardem is an ancient, eternal deity and Lawrence is the ever-renewing Earth, the power imbalance has to be there. It wasn't a mistake; it was a tool. Aronofsky wanted the audience to feel that Lawrence was vulnerable and that Bardem was "established" and immovable. It makes the ending—where he literally takes her heart to restart the cycle—even more gut-wrenching.
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Why Their Chemistry Felt "Off" (On Purpose)
Usually, you want your leads to have "spark." In mother!, the chemistry between Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem is intentionally suffocating.
Bardem plays "Him" with a sort of predatory charisma. He loves his fans more than his wife. He loves the idea of her love, but not her. Lawrence plays "mother" with a desperate, subservient need to please. It’s hard to watch. It’s supposed to be.
Even though Lawrence was dating the director, Darren Aronofsky, during filming, she has since admitted she didn't always fully "get" what was happening. In a 2023 interview with Andy Cohen, she joked that she was "still pretty lost" regarding the film's deeper meanings, despite sleeping with the director.
Bardem, on the other hand, leaned into the "beast" of the performance. He described working with Lawrence and Michelle Pfeiffer as being with "animals" in the best way possible—actors who are so raw and present they're almost dangerous to be around.
The Lasting Legacy of the Lawrence-Bardem Pairing
We don't see these two together anymore. Since the 2017 release, they haven't shared the screen again. mother! remains a singular, weird artifact in both of their filmographies.
For Lawrence, it was the end of her "prestige indie" run before she took a brief hiatus from Hollywood. For Bardem, it was another entry in his "terrifying but magnetic" catalog.
If you're looking to revisit this duo, don't go in looking for a love story. You won't find one. Instead, look for:
- The way Bardem uses his eyes to show "God" looking for worship rather than connection.
- The physical toll Lawrence takes as she tries to protect a house that doesn't want to be saved.
- The subtle way they handle the arrival of the "strangers" (Harris and Pfeiffer), which sets the stage for the film's descent into madness.
What to do next:
If you actually want to understand the Lawrence/Bardem dynamic without getting a headache, watch the first 30 minutes again. Ignore the "horror" tags. Watch it as a domestic drama about a woman whose husband won't stop inviting people over. It becomes a completely different—and much more relatable—nightmare.
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After that, check out the "making of" featurettes. Seeing Lawrence in her Kardashian tent right after screaming her lungs out at Bardem is the only way to truly appreciate the technical skill it took to pull this movie off. Just don't expect a sequel. Some bridges (and houses) are meant to be burned.