S Poddar
In the new film, Amy Adams plays a mother who thinks she’s turning into a dog every night. It’s a bizarre and fascinating premise. The movie Nightbitch, going on general release in the UK at the London Film Festival, is based on the 2019 novel of the same title by Rachel Yoder. The outlandish premise itself makes for a metaphor about the sometimes intense, wild experience of motherhood.
In the film, Adams portrays a lady who quits a promising artistic career to care for an infant child at home. As she gradually finds herself lost in the same society she once belonged to, her husband keeps going to his job in the office. While she becomes accustomed to her new role as a full-time parent, she not only starts relating so strongly to behaviors of dogs- acting upon her primal instincts and going to attack whatever gets her child out of sort. The lines have blurred between her reality and her imagination as she frets with the stresses of motherhood and inquires whether it is blurring her identity in the process.
The playfulness, creativity, and brutally honest approach to motherhood made Nightbitch a “playful, creative, and brutally honest portrayal of being a mom,” according to the works of Maureen Lee Lenker for Entertainment Weekly. Nightbitch, on the other hand, does not make parenthood something that would destroy life. In fact, Vanity Fair’s Hillary Busis said that in taking care of a little child, it is monotonous.
By the acclaimed writer-director Marielle Heller—of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Can You Ever Forgive Me? here—this movie, which lifts from the 1976 novel of the same name by Rona Jaffee, is set to enter theaters in December. All in all, surreal body horror elements—by which I mean, for example, that the mother grows fur and extra nipples and, at one stage, even a tail—are fairly frequently invoked in the film, but these moments are symbolic rather than shocking.
For their UK premiere at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Heller and Adams walked the red carpet together, both in black. The all-blackness appeared somewhat to reflect the movie’s tone and messages. Adams recounts in an interview with Vanity Fair how she was drawn into Yoder’s novel. It was “unique and otherworldly.” What struck a chord for her most of all was the theme of losing one’s identity, which was so intensely compelling for her. “Through her parenting—through her mothering—she got in touch with something bigger and something primal,” said Adams when discussing her character’s journey.
The film runs 98 minutes and has been enjoying pretty positive reviews, although some of the critics still noted that the themes are not probed thoroughly. Maureen Lee Lenker appreciated how much the film goes deep into motherly complexities, especially the feeling of being cut off from one’s past self and life. She emphasized that “Nightbitch” does not simply say the isolation of motherhood exists but pushes things forward to note the messiness, magic, and rawness of the experience.
Many have remarked that an offbeat plot of this movie offsets the candid way of portraying parenting. In a glowing review, Sara Clements of Pajiba wrote, “Adams gives the beast of a performance, playing a mom whose metamorphosis unfurls raw, unvarnished truths about motherhood.” Clements suggests that Heller captures the love for the child along with an impossibility of carrying the burden of motherhood.
Jourdain Searles from Little White Lies thinks the film is offbeat in tone but concluded that its most important takeaway is based on greater truths concerning a person’s identity and motherhood. Nadia Dalimonte from Next Best Picture believes the film failed to perfectly balance the visual aspects in correlation to its deeper themes but gives Heller credit for the things that brought this film to a satisfying end through its sympathetic storytelling.
However, not all reviews have been glowing. Natalia Keogan from The AV Club argued that while the film captures the unspoken emotional labor of mothers, it never really digs deeper into the systemic issues that cause such feelings of unfulfillment. She believed a film needs to do more than just representation-to challenge and question broader societal structures.
As the film gains traction ahead of its wider release, it is truly inspiring a conversation about the nature of motherhood, identity, and those primal instincts that we are more often called to suppress. Plus, paired with the incredible acting performance of Adams, Heller’s unique vision for the project, Nightbitch proves to be as strange and bold as one might hope for in a cinematic exploration of motherhood in today’s world.
