Motherhood goes to the dogs.
I’ve been in question about how I would take the new dark comedy “Nightbitch.” I knew the story involves Amy Adams as a mother who becomes a dog at night, but I was also pondering if the film would stoop to gross out dog jokes like the raunchy comedy “Strays” did or if it would be as stressful and hellish as “The Front Room” was in regard to its first time mothers genre.
But when I saw it at the Chicago International Film Festival, it proves to be much better than that. It’s really about how a woman can embrace her life, even if she has to go all “Shaggy Dog” on herself. But the screenplay doesn’t elevate on it as much as it should. There’s a lot of positive influences for women, and their voices deserve to be heard. That’s what’s mostly strong about the film. But the story needs to delve deeper, and maybe take some more risks. Then, you’d have an original film with the right subject matter.
The Amy Adams mother has a baby boy (whom she calls “Baby”) and a husband (Scoot McNairy) gone 4 days a week for work. As much as she loves her child, she also becomes disillusioned by how motherhood has affected her wellbeing as well as her artist career. We get shots of her openly expressing them, but as always, they turn out to be dream sequences, and what she really says in her reality.
For example: a question she is asked is: “How’s motherhood?”
Her dream answer: it drives her up the wall with an overlong statement.
Her real answer and it’s short: it’s great.
After some encounters with some dogs, she starts to become one herself at night. To embrace her inner animal, she and her baby stuff their face with food in the tradition of the “Mama’s Little Piggy” scene in “A Christmas Story,” and she and her husband have conflicts about the choices made within their marriage. At least, we don’t see her defecating in the streets or in the kitchen.
“Nightbitch” was directed by Marielle Heller, who made this her personal film, as she’s a mother and she loves Rachel Yoder’s book upon which this movie is based on. She also admits that given her filmography (which also consists of “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Can You Ever Forgive Me,” and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”), she would like to take a different approach to her line of work, instead of leaving her filming trademarks. I met her after a screening of the film at the Chicago International Film Festival, and I told her how I was able to relate to the film in a few ways. My mother has some crazy stories about me as a baby, and I am an uncle to two boys, one of them just born on Thanksgiving. So, I was able to be reminded of those special things in my life.
Adams does a fine job playing a woman struggling to grasp what her world brings for her, and there’s a lot for audiences-both male and female-to acknowledge. But what the story needs is to really go deep inside her turmoil and what she must learn to overcome. A movie when she turns into a dog can be interesting, especially in the independent circuit where commercialism and the obligatory F-bombs can’t overshadow it. But I think more could have been done with it than what is presented here.
“Nightbitch” makes much better choices than how other movies of its kind have lately and it wants to spread the word about woman having voices. It just needed to broaden itself a little more. And this one is definitely house trained.
In Select Theaters This Friday
