Sometimes in my reviews I will cheekily dub a character “Lady Mom”, such as in my review of Unstoppable, in which Jennifer Lopez stars as a stereotypically underwritten mother character. “Lady Mom” is a derogatory shorthand for characters definable only by being female and mothers, with no real individual narrative significance. Never mind that minor male characters usually have definable traits other than their role in the protagonist’s life, so often mother figures in film are treated as plot points—is she helping or hindering the protagonist?—or perhaps as allegorical figures representing something the protagonist is either missing or longing for (or both). Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, though, asks what if Lady Mom was a whole person under all that motherhood?
Adapting from Rachel Yoder’s book of the same name, Heller’s film centers on Mother, played with ferocious commitment and fun by Amy Adams. Unstoppable barely used the Lady Mom character’s name, but that felt like a symptom of overall poor writing for the character, Judy. Here, referring only to the protagonist as “Mother” is a deliberate eliding of identity, a representation of this woman’s feeling that she has no self, that she is only, at the expense of everything else, of everything that once made her her, Mother. Similarly, Scoot McNairy stars as Husband, and twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden star as Son.
The lack of names is an important signifier of how hidebound this family has become by their gender roles. Mother used to be an artist in the city with a burgeoning career, now she is a suburban stay-at-home-mom whose entire life is subsumed by childrearing. She no longer creates, she only caretakes, and her inner monologue expresses all the doubt, resentment, self-recrimination, loathing, and anger she never voices out loud. Husband is constantly going away on business trips and refers to caring for his own child as “babysitting”. He can’t get through bathtime without multiple callouts to Mother for help. Son is an adorable but destructive two-year-old.
One day, Son says Mother is “fuzzy”, and she notices a patch of downy hair on her tailbone. She chalks it up to perimenopause and moves on, though she also notices her teeth seem sharper, and her sense of smell is heightened. Also, she is suddenly attracting dogs everywhere she goes. Is Mother going through a new phase of life, or is she undergoing a different kind of metamorphosis? Heller is explicit, if not overindulgent, with the body horror which suggests something gnarly is happening to Mother, and soon she is transforming into a (really beautiful) dog and running through the streets at night. Or is she? Everyone will have their own opinion regarding the reality of the film, but Mother does have memories of her own mother and grandmother that suggest their family has a little something extra going on.
Nightbitch is very unsubtly about the primal side of motherhood. Mother is a complicated knot of emotions and impulses, but she is confident that she loves her son no matter how angry or resentful she may get at times. She just wasn’t prepared for the total takeover of motherhood, largely because no one told her, because motherhood is so often sold as the most wondrous experience a person can have. But with no support, 24/7 childrearing leaves nothing for herself, and so her self has faded to nothingness, at least until her inner canine starts bringing it back. The more Mother indulges her inner dog, the more her confidence returns, and she begins instituting changes in her life that allow her sense of self to reform around her new, maternal shape.
Amy Adams is one of a very few actresses who could so believably portray Mother. She’s the exact right combination of vulnerable and tough, with her long unadorned tresses and flowy caftans, Mother looks like your average earth mama, but Adams can snarl as easily as she smiles. Mother is a woman on the brink, trying everything to manage her increasingly unruly emotions, but she hides it all behind a sweet smile, at least until she starts curling her lip in a growl. Adams flashes between expressions in the blink of an eye, never less than convincing that this woman is experiencing something profound, whether it’s literally happening or not.
Nightbitch is the kind of film meant to provoke conversation, but you’d have to be a real asshole to disagree that motherhood is hard, and mothers don’t get enough support, so people will mostly debate whether or not the dog transformation is real. This is not a subtle film, but Marielle Heller isn’t trying to do anything complicated with it, she’s just giving voice to the experience of motherhood, with all its unexpected joys and pain, its costs and rewards. Sometimes just saying these things out loud is all that is needed, and Nightbitch is a 100-minute ode to moms letting it all hang out, whether “all” is eight nipples or conflicting feelings of love and resentment. Nightbitch is a fierce, funny, kind of gross film about motherhood and all the changes it wreaks on the bodies, minds, and identities of the people going through it.
Nightbitch will play exclusively in theaters from December 6, 2024. Content warning for a scene of animal cruelty.