Directed by Marielle Heller | Written by Heller from the book by Rachel Yoder | 99 min | ▲▲▲▲| Crave
A version of this review appeared on FITI during the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024
This week the nominations for the 2025 Academy Awards dropped. For the most part I think it’s a reasonable selection of films, especially impressed by the love for deserving films like I’m Still Here (opening in cinemas soon) and Flow. I’m surprised both by the wild approbation for Emilia Perez and the insane online hatred, I don’t think it deserves either.
I’m also surprised that one of the best movies I saw at TIFF last September was completely ignored. It didn’t even get a theatrical release, despite it being a hilarious, thoughtful, and unique take on the challenges of motherhood and identity, and offering a fantastic performance from Amy Adams. It’s also a more original werewolf movie than that one I saw last week.
She is the Mother, deeply frustrated by her domestic role two years since she had her son. She and the boy go to he grocery store, to the park, and to the library (where she seeks mentorship from the librarian, Jessica Harper). She goes to Book Babies, but hates the idea of making friends with other mothers simply because they have successful reproduction in common. Then she starts to suspect she’s tapping into something primal. “I could crush a walnut with my vagina,” she says.
Nightbitch is driven by the Mother’s internal monologue, by her pain and guilt around her changing identity and suburban frustrations, and it raises questions about what her own mother went through, the sacrifices she made. It’s also wildly funny. If it doesn’t quite go to the natural conclusion of its werewolf allegory — it backs off in the third act — it still carries us someplace new.
One of the complaints of her husband (a fantastically clueless Scoot McNairy) when she reveals how unhappy she is having sacrificed her role as an artist to be a mother is that he had no idea because she kept it all to herself. She was too ashamed to admit how difficult it is until she almost had a breakdown, which nails the pressure so many women must feel to be a great mom while also trying to maintain some semblance of who they were before the kid came into their lives. When he asks, “What happened to the woman I married?” She says, “She died in childbirth.”
The film’s utterly unafraid of tackling this sticky subject in the messiest, weirdest way, which might be part of the reason Nightbitch never got the attention it deserved — I hope it will now that it’s arrived on streaming. It will make some of its audience uncomfortable, but the picture is a genuine joy. Marielle Heller — Can You Ever Forgive Me? A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, The Diary Of A Teenage Girl — is now four for four as a director of great movies, mixing drama, comedy, and pathos without hesitation.
