‘Nightbitch’ Review: Amy Adams Goes Feral in Marielle Heller’s Neutered Adaptation of Stressed-Out Mom Novel | TIFF
‘Motherhood is a Bitch.’ So says the tagline of the new Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) film starring Amy Adams as the titular Nightbitch. This serious subject matter is not new—not to film, and not to literature. So it was that in the Rachel Yoder novel from which Heller’s adapted her hilarious script, the concept is attacked through a fantastical allegory, that of a woman turning into a dog. In the film, Heller and Adams pay lip service to the source material but do not fully trust its thrust. They instead abandon it by the wayside midstream, resulting in more of a pedestrian movie than a canine one.
The main character is ‘Mother’ (Adams). She is nameless, as is her adorable two-year-old son ‘Baby’ and her aloof and mostly absent husband ‘Father’ (Scoot McNairy). She is nameless because she could be you and she could even be me—the point is that it could and does happen to anyone. But she is not faceless. The excessively puffy eyes, the anchor-like crows’ feet, the dark circles, the sunspots made worse by the lack of sleep—they are all very familiar to any mother who has cared for a child.
Not only does Heller make sure to show Mother’s physique as hopelessly deteriorated past the point of any hope, her life is mundane and monotonous. An early, well-edited scene shows her mornings on a loop, a piece of butter landing into a sizzling skillet, a little boy throwing a tantrum for breakfast, Mother staring absently out the window. She goes to the local library for ‘Baby Book’ hour but is turned off by the fake cooing and cawing of the other mothers, who she views as pack animals simply sniffing each other’s behind. In one of the film’s many amusing opening sequences, Mother goes nuts at the supermarket, giving bizarre answers to mundane questions, with Heller making liberal but effective use of the tried but true ‘imagine if I had done that instead’ cinematic trick.
To add insult to injury, Mother is suffering from one additional, backbreaking injustice, as we later find out. She gave up her dreams to be an artist (Big Eyes, anyone?), so that she could become a full-time mother. The creative, spunky, weird, and go-getting woman she was died at childbirth, she later portrays with sadness. Adams goes through all these stages with her usual brilliance, her signature touching and empathetic but convincing portrayal. The family story may feel familiar, and you are instantly hooked.
One final, intriguing ingredient of this promising story then presents itself. Mother thinks she is turning into a dog. ‘Mommy has fur,’ Baby announces when she notices hair growing on her lower back. Her teeth become sharper, and she begins to take a strange liking to raw red meat. Later, a strange cyst appears, which she pops to reveal a burgeoning tail that instead of horrifying mother, makes her begin to feel strangely alive, like a night bitch. The promise of a body horror schlocky subplot to go along the suburban motherhood ennui comedy presents itself, but it is not to be.
Though Heller’s script is extremely clever in its setup, as her scripts always are, she does not fully trust the admittedly bizarre source material, leaving it by the wayside like overstuffed doggie bags, along with many other concepts. Mother mentions hypochondria and perimenopause, concepts that perhaps will later explain her bizarre, canine behavior. There is a book about mystical women that turn into animals she believes she picks up at the library. She has visions of her mother, who maybe ran away when she turned into a dog but later came back. Or maybe her mother also gave up her career, and Mother feels a newfound connection with her. Most of these ideas are mentioned in passing, never to be unearthed again.
And whatever happened to the whole notion of turning into a dog, into a night bitch? That, too, is not to be.
Instead, Heller and Adams are content to reduce Nightbitch into a far more familiar, if still slightly edgy dramedy. A modern combination of Bad Moms with Kramer v. Kramer, with a series of dead animals on the porch and some serious growling mixed in between. Heller both adds structure to Yoder’s somewhat messy story by giving it clearly defined acts, but also removes some of the wildness from the proceedings.
It is certainly welcome that motherhood is not portrayed in that obnoxious, Hollywood favorite way. Mother proclaims herself a ‘saggy, middle-aged woman with nothing intelligent left to add to the conversation. Insignificant.’ But it is the way in which Mother grapples with these realizations that make the film’s potential feel unrealized. One minute, she is making Baby sleep in a doggie bed as a way to finally tame his savagery. Next, she is taking control of her life in far more familiar ways, like getting a job, or telling her husband to eff off. It is one constant tease, as if the chain is being yanked violently every time the pooch is about to run loose.
The sum total of Nightbitch is that it shows off a series of cute party tricks, only to leave you longing for much more. It is a victim of its own indecision, perhaps like the film’s principal character. She abandoned creative pursuits in favor of the traditional, the mundane. So too does this movie. Instead of swinging boldly, taking the risk that the setup invited it to, it pursued a far more conventional plotline. Motherhood is in fact, a bitch. So too is traditional storytelling. Next time, let’s do something bolder about it.
Grade: B
This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival where Nightbitch had its world premiere. Searchlight Pictures will release the film in the U.S. on December 6, 2024.
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