Motherhood is a bitch.
That was the tagline for Nightbitch on its teaser poster, which features a photo of a sweaty, dirty, snarling Amy Adams. Her face is in close-up, sharply front-lit, as if she's been caught in headlights at night. Nightbitch is a movie about a woman driven so crazy by parenting a toddler that she has fallen under the delusion (or is it?) that she is turning into a dog. So, then, here she is, clearly startled during her canine-esque nocturnal wanderings, her visage briefly captured, perhaps, by an accidental cryptozoologist.
It's an extraordinary poster, hinting at a savageness newly unleashed in a woman who otherwise looks... so... nice. In an entertainment ecosystem that all too often reduces women to mothers, and then motherhood to either one-dimensional saintliness or one-dimensional villainy, this poster seems to say: Here is a movie specifically about motherhood that is going to bite your f---ing head off.
I would like to see that movie.
Alas, Nightbitch is not that movie.
Misleading marketing aside, I don't think it's too much to have expected a bite-your-head-off movie, because the novel by Rachel Yoder upon which this is based is indeed fierce, feral and full of rage. I read it before I saw the film and thought, "This is gonna be tough to adapt for the screen, because it's so internal." It's almost stream-of-consciousness, as the unnamed protagonist contemplates the career as an artist and curator she gave up in return for the relentless, all-consuming monotony of motherhood, and then the wild freedom she rediscovers in her... well... bitch alter ego.
But it's not the internality that writer and director Marielle Heller struggles with here. That actually works pretty well on-screen. In one bit, Adams' Mother complains to Husband (Scott McNairy) about her stuck-at-home misery as he goes off to work, at a job that keeps him out of town all week, every week, rendering her a de facto single parent most of the time to terrible twos Son (Arleigh Patrick Snowden / Emmett James Snowden). He responds that "happiness is a choice"... earning him a well-deserved how-very-dare-you smack across his face. And then we get the second take — the reality, in which Mother refrains from slapping her clueless partner and instead swallows his condescension and makes nice.
It works well to portray Mother's state of mind, but it also comes, as depicted here, with a lighter tone that undercuts the feminist rancor of Yoder's book, and even undercuts Mother herself. Nightbitch the movie does the same thing Mother does: bites its tongue for fear of offending.
For sure, there are many realities of women's lives that remain unexplored in pop culture, and this movie does confront some of those connected with motherhood with glee: the tedium of kiddie food (hashbrowns and mac 'n' cheese — which ends up as easy "meal" for Mother to also feed herself), the lack of meaningful contact with other adults and more. These are the small indignities that mothers endure — the truths that only oh-so rarely get public airings, the things that are so mundane that we're not supposed to tell stories about them. And they are here, on display, with the glorious Amy Adams the face of them. All that is absolutely worth celebrating. None of it is even subtle, and that's exactly what is needed. In your face, Husbands.
But while the novel goes to shockingly animalistic places, really finds something vicious awakened in its unfulfilled protagonist, Nightbitch the movie goes for gentle comedy with only a tinge of body horror. It's never "Motherhood is a bitch [howl] [screech] [rip out the throat of an innocent bunny rabbit]," it's the much safer "Motherhood is a bitch, haha, but am I right, ladies? LOL. #LiveBarkLove." The movie is as afraid of leaning into maternal malcontentment as Mother is of speaking her mind.
Maybe Heller didn't actually struggle with bringing Mother's anger to the screen. Maybe she held back, because she knew that the world is not ready to face the unshackled rage of women. ♦
Nightbitch
Rated
Directed by Marielle Heller
Starring Amy Adams, Scoot McNairy, Arleigh Patrick Snowden and Emmett James Snowden
