There’s a zillion movies about mothers and children at this point in movie history. Most of them look at the rosy view of motherhood: Oprah’s assertion that it is the most important job of all. Even if it is hard, it’s always rewarding. Only in recent years, when female directors really started to get their chances, do we see that there may be some darker elements to motherhood, some so dark that they choose to up and leave that most important job because they found a new car to chase. Nightbitch lands somewhere in the middle, aka the reality, of what being a mother is all about, but the movie is perhaps chasing a car 8 times the size of the story it can realistically tell. Woof! Ok, no more puns.
Amy Adams is….NIGHTBITCH!!! She’s the mom to a son (twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden), and wife to a husband (Scoot McNairy) like billions of women out in the world. Having given up her artistic career to be a parent while her hubby works full time away from home until the weekends, mom struggles with the adjustment on an hourly basis. She starts retreating inward, channeling her innermost animal, which may or may not start to manifest into the superhero sounding title of the movie.
Marielle Heller in reality is probably the perfect director for Nightbitch. She really goes for it with her movie choices, in hopes that something special will come out of them, but in the end what we’re usually left with is something sometimes brilliant and sometimes really weird and messy. Frankly, what better way to describe motherhood, in all its hypocrisies? Heller is at her best when she’s showing us the highs and lows of the “job.” Right from the get go she’s got us hooked, showing the monotonous routines of daily parenting: cooking the same 3 hashbrowns, having some playtime, going to the park, reading a bedtime story, struggling to get him to sleep. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. But then, Heller follows up with these really sweet moments, where the son does something really cute and funny a wonderful euphoric respite for poor mom. Heller then expands the scope of the story to show those complexities outside of parenting, whether it be with her husband, or her art friends in the city, or even the other mom’s in the library. Each day is a new emotional quagmire to navigate, and Amy Adams is a willing contributor to Heller’s vision for the story, navigating these contradictions as best as she can.
But Heller lacks the deft hand of some of the great directors, and Icarus’s herself into the sun. We get show AND tell, with obvious scenes supplemented by Adams voiceover, hammering the point home twice over and over again. And the voiceover is also inconsistently heard by characters, making it hard to know if we’re inside mom’s head or not. The mothering roller coaster leads to all sorts of tonal whiplash, moment to moment, that never quite gel. I get that might be the point, but it makes for an awkward viewing experience with the audience unsure to laugh, or cry, or be scared, etc. Uneasy laughter is the general vibe my audience landed on, but even that took a long time for us collectively to figure out and the shh’s I heard meant that everyone was watching different films. This might be a situation where faithful title choice cratered what Heller wants the movie wants to do. If it was called “Motherhood” I might have followed along with the crazy, but Nightbitch promises something more silly and weird, which this movie really aims higher than.
So…good try? I’m left in thought from Nightbitch, which honestly shocks me with that title. Someday someone’s gonna get the intricacies of being a mom 100% correctly, but we need films like this Marielle Heller/Amy Adams swing and miss to give the concept a try to see what works and what doesn’t. I do wish the end credits had some sort of killer Olivia Rodrigo single called “Nightbitch”, which…I mean, Olivia, feel free to take that one for free!