My entire life, I've been indifferent on having children. As a person with a uterus, I of course grew up understanding that time is of the essence and with the unrelenting drum of a society telling me motherhood should be something I want, something I crave. Instead, I pursued my professional dreams and built myself a life where, if it happened I'd embrace it, but if not, I'd embrace that, too.
I was never confronted with that non-decision so starkly as I was during the depths of the pandemic in the latter half of 2020. Immediately before COVID-19 destroyed all our lives, I'd begun shifting my mentality into preparation for prioritizing a relationship; in other words, I was in my late 30s and new, instinctually, that it was now or never. Find a partner in the next couple of years or, you know, that maternity ship has sailed. And then: lockdown. The decision I'd avoided making for decades was now made for me, as my plans to put myself out there evaporated before my eyes, all potential for meeting someone to spend my life with just...gone. And with it, the last whispers of potentially conceiving and starting a family, even at my "advanced" age.
As I've processed this reality (and the unexpected, accompanying grief so rudely imposed upon me) and come to terms with the direction my life has gone instead, I can confidently say that it has all turned out better than I've ever imagined. I've met that partner, and we are building a beautiful, fulfilling and ultimately child-free life together. Carrying a child in my body, birthing a new life, all these paradigm-shifting experiences—it turns out, I will never know any of these firsthand.
None of this limits in any way my ability (nor yours, I imagine) to respond viscerally and fiercely to Marielle Heller's animalistic (and actually dare I say triumphant) Nightbitch, a film that so expertly renders the motherhood experience—its physicality, its primalness, its depth of both darkness and light—that it should be taught in college courses. This is a film that only a mother could make, only someone who has lived this particular version of the life cycle, who understands in their bones, in their DNA, what it is author Rachel Yoder (on whose book the film, written by Heller, is based) is trying to capture in this story of a toddler mom going slowly feral as she yearns to recapture some familiar version of herself.
Nightbitch is the epitome of that very popular trope in filmmaking, the idea of, "who gets to tell whose story?" This is, admittedly, a very particular motherhood experience. White. Cis. Straight. Suburban. Upper-middle class. Two-parent household. There are of course a million parenthood perspectives and experiences this film doesn't acknowledge. But when it comes to the one it does, the one Heller is best equipped to tell, it becomes an essential contribution to any conversation around motherhood, relationships, identity and all the grander societal questions associated. Here, in ways both fantastical and quite literal, is a woman's story in her own words, from her own vantage point, one that gives a woman who is struggling in very real, very misunderstood ways the chance to process it all as never before.
Amy Adams stars as a character only known as "Mother" (she doesn't even get her own name...), a former visual artist who is two years into stay-at-home motherhood to a very cute (and very rambunctious) toddler (twins Emmett and Arleigh Snowden). Her husband ("Father," played by Scoot McNairy) has a job that takes him away from home from Monday morning to Friday evening, leaving Mother and Son on their own to find ways to fill their days and keep the little one alive in the process. An early montage deftly shows us the monotony of Mother's days, crisping up hashbrowns for breakfast on repeat. She doesn't shower, she wears the same grubby clothes every day, she can't quite tell where she ends and her toddler begins. There's story time at the library where other mothers (Zoë Chao, Mary Holland and Archana Rajan) are seemingly far more into it (the story time, yes, but also...motherhood).
Before long (no spoilers), Mother's humanity wears so thin it starts to be replaced by canine characteristics. It sounds like a leap, but Heller and Adams make it work, small signs of the metamorphosis sneaking in so subtly that we are inclined to go along with this strange ride. Mother's sense of smell heightens. Her canine teeth sharpen and elongate. Neighborhood dogs suddenly find her irresistible. And the more she notices these changes, the more she embraces them, too, until before long she's given completely over to these primal instincts and takes to exploring the world in the most feral, free ways possible.
Nightbitch will resonate with every mother who's ever felt a sense of loss and confusion at the sudden and irreversible shift in identity caused by birthing a child. Its magic is in the way it will resonate with plenty of other people, those with a uterus or children or not. As Mother gives herself over to these animalistic urges, she's breaking free of so many of the world's expectations and oppressions that it's invigorating to watch. In one of the more resonant threads of a film fabricated of them, all of Mother's changes ultimately mean that her relationships change, too. Particularly poignant is the evolution of her marriage, as she and Father are forced to confront that she is no longer who he married (literally and figuratively).
If last summer's best feminist film scene was America Ferrera's monologue in Barbie about the stress and unrealistic expectations of being a woman in the world, Nightbitch serves as a natural and welcome progression in the conversation. Amy Adams picks up the baton and runs with it, like only an unleashed dog chasing freedom can, into the liberation that comes with reclaiming one's agency and evolving into the best version of oneself yet.
Nightbitch works well as a measured thriller, a family drama and even a bit of a fantasy adventure. But where it excels is as a testament to a woman's infinite ability to cope and, perhaps more importantly, unmatched talent for transformation.
Nightbitch opens in theaters on December 6.
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