“Birth is perhaps the most violent experience a human can have aside from death itself.” In her latest film, Nightbitch, Amy Adams says this statement, not with pain or sadness but with certainty, understanding, and excitement.
As the unnamed mother at the center of this story, Adams is a stay-at-home parent to an unnamed son, struggling to keep her head above water. Her child still sleeps with her, she is by herself with very little adult socialization, and her mood is constantly brought down by the repetitive schedule of raising a kid. When her workaholic husband is present, he constantly relies on her in child-rearing. He can’t even get through a bath without asking her for help multiple times. How many moms can relate to that?
While alone, she starts to notice changes in her body— a heightened sense of smell, sharper teeth, and longer and more frequent body hair. Here, director Marielle Heller eases us into the magical realism part of the film. As Adam’s character slowly starts to relate more and more to canines, they start to follow her everywhere, from the park to her dreams.
This is Amy Adams’ movie. She fully commits to the bit with wild unhinged abandon. Heller builds her lead character out of contradictions and Adams’ does her job so well that you understand the lead’s perspective completely. She’s never had a funnier role and it is refreshing to still her taking risks at this point in her career. It’s unlikely that she will be nominated for her efforts by any major awards board outside of the Golden Globes, but watching her fall apart and come back together again is reward enough, at least for the viewer.
Marielle Heller has built her filmography off of adaptations. The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me, and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, all come from books or articles. Nightbitch is no different with Heller writing the script from Rachel Yoder’s novel. I have not read the book, but Heller’s adaption works for the unfamiliar. The narrative is laid out cleanly and the tension builds evenly. I often feel that a film adaptation needs to fight for its right to exist, and Heller’s visuals alone succeed in that category.
The trailer makes Nightitch seem more bizarre than it is. Personally, I thought it was going to thoroughly cross over into the body horror genre. It doesn’t, in fact, I could have used more gore. But what Heller does give us is an effective, searing depiction of motherhood.
If motherhood transforms a person, Heller explores all the uncomfortable ways it does that we don’t want to talk about: the identity crisis, the lack of sleep, the primal urges to rip your partner’s throat out.
Searchlight Pictures opens Nightbitch in theaters on December 6th.
