Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“Do you just love getting to be home with him all the time?” a woman asks Amy Adams’ mother in the opening minutes of “Nightbitch,” prompting the mom to go into a long internal monologue about how it’s complicated. It’s something between love and hate.
Written and directed by Marielle Heller, and adapted from Rachel Yoder’s best-selling novel, ‘Nightbitch’ stars Amy Adams as an un-named artist-turned-stay-at-home mom as she begins to unravel, letting her inner animal go wild.
Let’s just call her ‘the mom’, since Nightbitch is all about how the artist is reduced to nothing but a caretaker of her child, any signs of her own individuality erased. Eveb a trip to the grocery store with her toddler is a challenge. The camera zooms in, her exhaustion palpable, her eyes shadowed, her steps heavy. It’s clear she’s reached her limit, craving a break from the relentless routine of full-time motherhood while her husband remains blissfully distant, traveling for work.
Soon, this film takes an unexpected twist into the surreal. Adams’ character, trapped in a cycle of sleepless nights and endless days, begins to undergo a bizarre transformation. Her canines grow sharper, patches of hair start to sprout, and she develops a taste for the primal. The artist begins prowling through the dark, her eyes gleaming with a newfound wildness. By day, she’s a “dog-tired” mom, but by night, she roams the wild, embracing her inner beast.
While the concept is wacky and no doubt entertaining, ‘Nightbitch’ unfolds like a stage play, where it feels like it would be more fun watching it live. Even though Adams is convincing as the artists, her journey becomes a little bizarre and boring in the second half of the film.
Nightbitch treats its artist mother as someone special, as if the other mothers aren’t going through the same thing. Although of course the message is that maybe the other moms have made peace with their loss of sense, but the artist isn’t able to adapt like them.
Emmett James Snowden who plays the artist’s child is adorable, so it’s hard to ever be mad at him (since he is out protagonist’s primary problem.) But the husband definitely can be incredibly daft and unsupportive when he is back from work.
Overall, this is an interesting film, which isn’t as memorable as it could have been.
Watch Nightbitch on Disney Hotstar.
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