“Mother, Couch!” is an allegorical drama cryptic enough to confuse, cringy enough to put-off but thanks to its cast, inviting enough to make you want to puzzle it out.

Based on a novel by the Swedish writer Jerker Virdborg, it’s about parents and children, families with issues, “tests” and stresses that build through life and come to a head as an adult dealing with a failing and failed parent.

And if you can’t grasp what it’s getting at straight away, lean on that old critic’s standby as your rationale for decoding it. Two Oscar winners, along with Ewan McGregor, Lake Bell, Rhys Ifans and Lara Flynn Boyle saw something in writer-director Niclas Larsson’s adaptation that drew them in. We should at least try to get what they got out of it.

McGregor plays frantic, struggling family man David, trapped in the Oakbeds Furniture warehouse with his unfocused, newly-married and still-on-the-make older brother Griff (Ifans). They’re stuck there because they stopped there, for some reason. Their aged mother (Ellen Burstyn) came in, found a sofa she liked, and parked herself on it.

“I’m not coming, David.”

She is uncommunicative and unbending. She won’t leave. So that birthday party for his daughter that David was taking them to? That’s off. His wife’s phone calls are exasperated, to say the least. She’s played by Lake Bell, so you can see why that would have David upset.

Griff is too busy flirting with the very young and cute sales clerk Bella (Taylor Russell) to get Mom motivated. Summoning older sister Linda (Boyle) just earns an abrupt “I’m calling 9-11” from her.

Mom is having a mental health crisis. Mom is at her most defiant and unreasonable. David’s the last one to try reasoning with her. And there’s this dresser she gives David the key to. Find that and maybe this will all be worth it, or at least we’ll have some answers.

“Mother, Couch!” is about a hellish couple of days David — with his less helpful siblings — spends trying to resolve this situation, persuade their mother to move, save his marriage, please his little girl and not get tempted by the coquettish store clerk or tricked or browbeaten into buying furniture from the store’s owner. “Owners.” Both are played by F. Murray Abraham.

Bella the clerk is naive, unfiltered and a tad over-familiar, commenting on people’s ages, psychoanalyzing one and all in a snap.

“You all seem so broken.”

That sparkle that McGregor is famous for here is more of a “glisten,” as he lets us see him sweat. Whatever anyone else is going through, David is drowning — drowning while juggling all the responsibilities a 48 year-old man can shoulder.

Testy, stubborn Mom is kind of a monster. And as we peel away the relationships of one and all, hear her confessions and weigh a proper response to them as we hear everyone else’s improper ones, “Mother, Couch!” tumbles toward a sort of purgatory in retail suburban (Charlotte, N.C.) furniture store hell.

The cast is first-rate on paper and in performance, here, with Abraham reminding us of how much we miss him between rare screen appearances. Burstyn summons up all the guilt and bile at her disposal for this mother, Boyle chain-smokes and bites-off dismissals, Russell beams, Ifans plays the lecherous slacker he’s perfected over the decades and Bell gives away the resignation of a wife who knows all that her husband is dealing with right now, and might no longer interested in sharing his burdens.

Writer-director Niclas Larsson bit off more than he can chew for his feature directing debut. His “Mother” has hints of other dark, cryptic “Mother” thrillers of recent years — from Hollywood to Korea and beyond. But something was lost in the adaptation, and the cost of that loss was in the story’s coherence.

Still, for anybody who relishes performance over “the puzzle,” who gets a charge out of seeing screen legends make Ewan McGregor sweat, “Mother, Couch!” is worth getting off the sofa for.

Rating: unrated, violence, profanity, partial nudity

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ellen Burstyn, Rhys Ifans, Taylor Russell, Lara Flynn Boyle, Lake Bell and F. Murray Abraham.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Niclas Larsson, based on a novel by Jerker Virdborg. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:36