Motherhood has a branding problem. According to a recent Pew Research Center study, a growing share of adults under 50 say they probably won’t have children, and women are even less interested than men. There are plenty of practical reasons — the cost of living and concerns about the environment top the list — but the collective cultural drumbeat about just how much motherhood stinks is no doubt playing a part.
For every tradwife social media feed or organic-juicing momfluencer in her clutter-free kitchen who presents a gauzy portrait of idyllic motherhood, we’re served up a sea of scathing counterpoints: Instagram posts about stretch marks; TikTok posts bemoaning messy kid-tossed houses; podcasts discussing postpartum depression; TV comedies like “Workin’ Moms” and “The Letdown,” or the “Bad Moms” movie franchise, that are dedicated to relentlessly telling harsh truths about the gritty, grubby, draining wine o’clock-ness of motherhood.
Into this long season of maternal discontent trots “Nightbitch,” a dark comedy starring Amy Adams as an overwhelmed mom who may or may not be turning into a dog. Her unnamed character, who eventually gives herself the nickname Nightbitch, is an artist starved of her art and frequently down a husband; while he’s away on lengthy work trips, she’s at home losing herself to the domestic grind. Time passes in a monotonous haze of morning hash browns, midday library trips and “night nights,” with a smattering of trucks and trains throughout. At the end of her rope, she suspects this quotidian blandness is smothering the full force of what she senses to be a latent maternal power.
Soon Ms. Adams’s character undergoes a second transformation — since the first one, from woman to mother, didn’t garner much notice from anyone around her. Her teeth get pointy. She’s suddenly into raw meat and not into cats. At the base of her spine, a cyst appears. When lanced, out flops what looks to be a little tail.
The body-horror premise of “Nightbitch” could have been a primal scream for this moment of maternal ambivalence, a stark confessional delivered with a healthy dash of “The Substance” shock value. But the film takes a different path, doing something more surprising, more difficult and certainly rarer than laying bare the horrors of motherhood: It beautifully depicts the joy of parenting a young child.
“Nightbitch” shows maternal love in all its ordinariness and all its glory; a love that’s nestled right next to the fury one might reasonably feel about the transformation that motherhood demands and the lack of social support that mothers often feel. As a tract on parenthood, the film is not a culmination of the current vogue for maternity skepticism but an evolution of it, which makes “Nightbitch” quietly revelatory. It delivers a radical message: that it’s possible to be both a good mom and monstrous sometimes, too.
Most of the film, which is based on a much fiercer novel by Rachel Yoder, is a duet between a mother and toddler son. As the pair walk and talk through their days, the film almost feels like a documentary: We get to peer into this private mother-child cocoon.
The twin babies who play Ms. Adams’s son have great chemistry with their co-star, captured (and cultivated, no doubt) by the director Marielle Heller, who knows that in the best moments of play, parents and kids bring something primal — yes, animal — out of one another. As the mother and child snort and squeal, ripping around the playground playing “doggies” (naturally), Ms. Heller shows how this kind of play can feel: chaotic, messy and the expression of a liberating life force.
Of course, the film gives equal weight to the “bitch” part of the story: A mom who manifests her rage in animal form is certainly in step with current cultural obsessions. But why shouldn’t moms want to bare their teeth once in awhile? “Nightbitch” arrives at the end of what’s been a rather lousy year for women. The anger that mothers feel — and which the carousel of take-my-baby-please online content both draws on and plays into — is deeply understandable.
Motherhood is a sociopolitical reality as well as a biological one. Lately, in America, the sociopolitics have not been playing out to mothers’ advantage. The policy apparatus that might lighten the maternal burden — more accessible day care, generous paid leave, full reproductive control — is either broken or nonexistent. The film nods to this when one mom, about to have her second child, points out that in Germany women can take yearslong government-subsidized maternity leave; considering the contrast to a typical American policy, if offered at all, is enough to make the fur stand up on one’s neck.
So far, the options on offer for women can sometimes seem to be twofold: Become a frazzled volcano mom or a supplement-shilling Instagram homemaker. Either way, the message to women is: You must lose yourself. “What happened to my wife?” asks the husband in the film. His wife’s response: “She died in childbirth.”
But “Nightbitch” ultimately offers a different, more hopeful prognosis: Yes, motherhood changes you, but not only in ways you’ll resist or regret.
My own kids are older now and, recently, heartbreakingly, out the door. Still, I well remember the shock of becoming a mother, and privately mourning my pre-child self, erased by exhaustion and replaced by some unfamiliar body and identity. I’m glad we talk more about these things. But watching “Nightbitch” from the vantage point of late-stage parenting, I kept thinking: That state is temporary.
Over the course of raising a kid, mothers experience different waves of stress and chaos coming in and out. The transformations are endless, for both mother and child. At each juncture, astonishing joy is braided to the struggle.
The high-concept premise of the film may be the tease to lure viewers, but watching Nightbitch and her human cub roll around in finger paint on the kitchen floor, laughing their tails off, felt more revolutionary, and more welcome, than any number of howling mom-wolves. Barking and biting are clickbait. Exploring tenderness is art.
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