Writer and director Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl) helms this magical-realism/horror-comedy based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel about a woman (Amy Adams) who pauses her art career to become a stay-at-home mom, but her new life takes a surreal turn when she sometimes transforms into a dog. (98 min.)
Glen: I absolutely loved this movie. It’s such a thought-provoking rumination on motherhood and how it changes a person. And Adams is amazing, delivering a tour-de-force, raw, vulnerable performance as Mother. By the way, the three principal characters have no specific name, just Mother, Son (twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden), and Husband (Scoot McNairy). Notice his title isn’t Father, because that’s part of Mother’s struggle. Husband’s work takes him away four days a week, and when he’s home, he’s less than helpful. Mother’s day-to-day life is a routine grind of feeding, washing, and entertaining Son, and she’s full of self-doubt, unsure of her mothering skills and mostly uninterested in bonding with other mothers. She isolates herself to her own detriment. Her turning into a dog feels like a metaphor for the post-pregnancy physical and mental changes she’s going through. When she embraces her transformation, she finds her strength.
Anna: Yes, Adams delivers here—her raw performance is ground-shaking. We’re introduced to her asides right away when she runs into a probable high school or college friend—one that got out of the humdrum of everyday life in Wherevertheyare, USA. Mother is palpably sad, a shell that most mothers can relate to in some way. Your body is no longer your own, your time is now devoted to things like “Book Babies,” and your sleep is an ever-elusive animal. This film is smart and adept with its messaging. We get to see rawness in a way that’s too often unappreciated in Hollywood. Pretty and sparkly is fun, and boy does it scream from the screen, but this type of realness and unapologetic honesty about parenthood should be roundly praised. This is triumphant.
Glen: It’s also laugh-out-loud funny. Adams is hilarious; we’re often treated to how she wants to react in a given situation—with brutal honesty or by slapping someone across the face—followed by how she actually responds. Not only is the film funny, it’s also deeply emotional. There were a couple of moments that just gutted me, and I could really understand Mother’s pain. Husband also eventually gained my sympathy, and witnessing the two characters misunderstand one another felt very real. Romantic relationships can be fraught with peril by saying the wrong thing or misinterpretation or simply being tone deaf to your partner. Writer-director Heller really delivers. There are moments of body horror, too, not as graphic as recent film The Substance, but effectively used. This one’s going down as one of my favorites of 2024.
Anna: It’s difficult, right? Even those who know each other best may not know exactly what their counterpart needs or yearns for in the moment. This is as much a story about relationships as it is about mothering. What happens if your partner doesn’t quite know how to show up? There’s something so elusive and magnificent about being absent, but the tradeoff of losing that time can be far too much for a mother to carry. Many times, mothers are asked to abandon their lives for the sake of caretaking, but that doesn’t always lead to happiness. Truly an ode to both the beauty and the pain of motherhood, Nightbitch reminds us of how to look at each other in this world, and how to acknowledge the pain that lives inside of the beauty.
New Times Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Sun Screen. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Dec 12-22, 2024.