Amy Adams dominates in Nightbitch, a wholly original take on primal motherhood
Adams could become the leader of the awards pack with Marielle Heller's latest.
Motherhood is wild in Nightbitch, a playful, creative, and brutally honest portrayal of being a mom.
Written and directed by Marielle Heller, who adapted from the book by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch is a frank dissection of female rage and post-pawrtum (sorry, not sorry) fracture.
Mother (Amy Adams) spends her days raising her two-year-old son, only granted a slight reprieve on the weekends when her husband (Scoot McNairy) returns, largely oblivious to the ways his wife is drowning. As her anger at his ineptitude grows, along with her sense of isolation and loss of sense of self, Mother undergoes a baffling transformation, seemingly becoming (at least in her own mind) a dog who runs through the streets of suburbia at night, howling at the moon.
If this premise sounds ludicrous, well, it is (though in no way should you take the trailer as any reflection of the film's true nature). It takes a writer-director of Heller's insightfulness and an actress as skilled as Adams to make it the wildly entertaining and profoundly honest film that it is. There is mild body horror as Mother discovers that she's sprouting a tale or developing six extra nipples. But Adams plays those moments with such disbelieving delight that she makes them more humorous than horrific. Nightbitch has a highly specific tone, one part strident feminist manifesto, one part tongue-in-cheek monster movie, and one part domestic dramedy.
At first, Mother decides to embrace her inner canine, bonding with other moms over their most feral instincts and encouraging her son to pretend he's a dog too. These scenes could read like an undergraduate theater class assignment in the hands of a lesser actress, but Adams leans into the absurd wildness of it with gusto. Acting is ultimately unfettered make-believe, and Adams returns to that most basic and essential form of play in her work. She makes the absurd both entertaining and utterly real, employing her singular ability to approach everything from a Disney princess come to life to a doubting nun in a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama with the same level of commitment and belief. Adams has always been a performer willing to put it all on the line, but Nightbitch is her most fearless work yet.