Release Date – 6th December 2024, Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 39 minutes, Director – Marielle Heller
Facing the increasing mundanity and stress of motherhood, and with her husband (Scoot McNairy) constantly away, a stay-at-home mum (Amy Adams) finds herself transforming into a dog.
The trailers for Nightbitch have posed it as an out-and-out barrel of laughs comedy. While it’s certainly a very funny film the extent of its humour has been intensely exaggerated to make it appear as a film of pure wacky silliness. In actual fact the latest from writer-director Marielle Heller, adapted from Rachel Yoder’s book of the same name, is a serious film in the guise of an unserious one. One where the dramatic edges become sharper and more prominent as the narrative develops, and Amy Adams’ Mother begins to embrace the fact that she may be turning into a dog.
As motherhood creates a cycle of mundanity and stress for the stay-at-home mum the isolation and fear that she’ll never be the same begins to take its toll. A montage shows each day as very much the same as she spends her days looking and cleaning up after her toddler (Arleigh and Emmett Snowden – credited as ‘Son’), hoping to one day be able to get back to being an artist. As the days go on, looking after her son alone with her husband (Scoot McNairy) constantly away for work, the more Mother begins to display doglike behaviours. There’s a sense of fun to these moments, and the film as a whole, which begins to appear in the more serious beats too.
Marielle Heller’s screenplay contains a lot to like but perhaps the most effective element is just how well it balances the very tricky balance between seriousness and humour within a film like this. The two blend together wonderfully and while Nightbitch might not be for everyone it’s certainly ambitious in what it wants to depict. In some respects it shares themes with 2021’s The Lost Daughter, but in this case Amy Adams is happy with being a parent, but worries that she’s losing herself as part of it and wants to take back control and have time to herself, wishing to avoid becoming “a middle-aged, saggy mom with nothing intelligent to add to the conversation”.
Adams gives a brilliant performance capturing the tired scatter of thoughts and hopes for calm staggering around her character’s half awake brain which is largely focusing on her child. Rage and disappointment begin to burn a hole through her which allows for her inner dog to leak through, landing her in awkward situations in public such as when she starts eating like an animal but also giving her a sense of freedom as she runs with a pack racing after her at night. This starts to appear in her shifting day-to-day where confidence jumps back in and she gets more of a sense of agency in her life in addition to that of being a mother. Shifting from a lack of caring as if almost giving up to a lack of care about what the rest of the world thinks as she marches on with a growing confidence, perhaps both best summed up in a scene where Mother commits and then some to a rendition of Weird Al Yankovic’s Dare To Be Stupid.
Nightbitch’s humour effectively acknowledges the strangeness of the central idea yet never diminishes the more serious themes at hand. Well stemmed from Marielle Heller’s well-balanced screenplay and direction, with help from Amy Adams on great form, this is a film that really gets its tone right and works because of it, when it could so easily falter or feel like a jumble. Conveying its core themes with a sense of fun and growing thought, this is a serious film that dares to be silly but never feels stupid.
Marielle Heller and Amy Adams, on great form, find the right balance between seriousness and humour in Nightbitch, which manages to tackle its increasingly sharp dramatic edges with thought and a sense of fun.
Just A Little Bit Random 