Film

Nightbitch
Director: Marielle Heller
Annapurna Pictures
In Theaters: 12.06

I turned 50 this month, and you don’t do this without starting to think seriously about bucket list items you’d like to cross off over the next 50 years or less. Some of these items seem more achievable than others, but the most inexplicably hopeless one would have to be “see a good Amy Adams movie again.” The once imminently reliable star of Enchanted, American Hustle, Big Eyes and Arrival has been in a major slump for about eight years now, and I was really hoping that together, she would break that slump with Nightbitch. 

Adams stars as a character identified only as Mother, and not just on screen, but to everyone around her, and increasingly to herself. A former artist who has chosen to put her career on hold to care for her young Son (Arleigh and Emmett Snowden), she believes that full-time motherhood will bring fulfillment. Instead, she finds herself overwhelmed and isolated. Husband (Scoot McNairy, Argo, C’mon ‘C’mon) is often away on business and leaves her alone to navigate the monotony of daily life, pushing her further into a state of disconnection and frustration. As the problem gets worse, strange changes begin to surface—her senses sharpen, her body sprouts hair and she begins to identify more as a dog than a woman.  As these transformations intensify, she questions whether they are dreams, fantasies or a descent into a primal state. 

Writer-director Marielle Heller has an impressive track record with Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, and my hopes were high for this adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel. I can only hope the material works better on the page, as here the rather pedantic and ham-fisted metaphor for postpartum depression feels condescendingly on-the-nose and yet far too tentative, as Heller seems to be constantly waffling on how literally she wants to play this scenario. One moment it’s ambiguous as to whether this is really happening or just a metaphor, and the next she’s murdering her cat. While the subject matter of motherhood and the expectations that come with it is certainly worthwhile, Nightbitch has little to nothing new or insightful to say. All of the ground that it covers, from feeling inadequate and undervalued to the growing resentment between the couple, feels like it’s moving down a checklist of rather obvious observations and tropes rather than saying anything from the heart. Simply put, I’d feel ill-equipped to review an introspective film about motherhood from a woman’s point of view if it all didn’t feel so generic and obvious that I could have written it myself with no personal experience to draw on.

The dialogue all feels rather stilted (“Do I regret having a child? No. But If I could go back in time, I’d sit us down and try to figure out a more equitable way to do this parenting thing.”) and the no names, only titles approach is rather telling of the generic characterization and broad strokes at work. While Nightbitch isn’t terrible by any means, at a mere 98 minutes it feels more like a short film that has been far too padded out than it does a feature.

Adams captures the depression and disconnection well enough, but she never sells the canine element with any particular degree of believability. There’s a tentative quality to her performance that left me feeling that the character might have been better served had someone with a more intense presence been cast in the role. McNairy is quite effectively clueless and off-putting, but doesn’t get to go much deeper, and he gives a far more layered performance as Woody Guthrie in A Complete Unknown, despite not having a single line of dialogue. The most satisfying performance comes from the Snowden twins, who are wonderfully natural and charismatic. The supporting ensemble features some familiar and talented faces, but they are all playing cardboard characters and don’t really register.

While I imagine that some audiences, particularly mothers, will connect with Nightbitch more profoundly than I did, and it certainly has some value, it’s hardly the searingly penetrative and daring film that it wants to be. Heller merely restates the same basic points about mothers being overwhelmed and appreciated over and over, as everyone watching is as willfully oblivious as the Husband character. The sentiment is sound, but the presentation is just a lot of incessant barking from an old and rather lifeless dog that is frustratingly lacking in new tricks. –Patrick Gibbs 

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