Mothers’ Instinct (now streaming on Hulu) pairs Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain for a bit of noirish melodrama that’s a remake of 2018 French-language film Duelles, itself an adaptation of a novel by Barbara Abel. The thought of two multi-Oscar-nominated actresses, surely among the best of their generation, going toe-to-toe as mid-century nextdoor-neighbor stay-at-home moms working their way through a rather tense frenemies period? Sounds delicious, if it’s done right, which, well, let’s get into that, shall we?
MOTHERS’ INSTINCT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: It’s 1960. Suburbia. Immaculate lawns. Waxed behemoth automobiles. Commuting fathers and stay-at-home mothers. Coifs and heels and strings of pearls. Alice (Chastain) walks into the house, opens a drawer and pulls out an approx. 47-inch gleaming kitchen knife – to cut a birthday cake! Oh boy. Should we prepare ourselves for some eyebrow-raising melodramatic juiciness? Um, no. This little bait-and-switch with the Sears and Roebuck samurai sword hints at the pulp that’ll take more than an hour to rise to the surface. In the meantime, we get some PTA-mom drama and trauma, not necessarily in that order. The setup is thus: Alice and Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie) have an eight-year-old son, Theo (Eamon O’Connell). Right next door live Celine (Hathaway) and Damian (Josh Charles), who have their own eight-year-old son, Max (Baylon D. Bielitz). The boys are tight pals and the adults put them to bed and mix cocktails and dance and then go to their respective homes for, one assumes a little missionary-position action. It’s the perfect life.
OR IS IT. Alice is haunted by the death of her parents when she was young, and her desire to go back to work at a newspaper, which her hubs opposes. Celine has one child, and that’ll forever be all – he’s her miracle, considering her struggle to conceive and carry. Now consider how she feels when young Max tumbles to his death from their balcony. Celine was vacuuming at the time. Alice spotted the boy on the ledge but by the time she dashed over it was too late. Both are overwhelmed with guilt for their roles in an accident that frankly deserves no blame but to the world itself for being so cruelly ironic. There’s quite the incident at the funeral over a stuffed bunny that belongs to Theo but turns up in Max’s coffin – what’s up with that. Not long after, Alice peers out the window and sees a disoriented Celine being led to a car, not to return for a month.
Considering the era, it’s no conclusionary leap to say Celine wasn’t pampered at a spa, or sent to psychologically heal with her toes in the sand on a tropical beach. The Bunny Incident was just a hint at the awkward never-the-same-againness to come: Alice tries to share her own story of being committed to a mental hospital, but Celine’s response isn’t akin to the sisterly empathy they once shared. Even more awkwardly, Celine and little Theo seem to be bonding in their grief. Nobody’s the same after stuff like this, understandably. But how much are they not the same? Well, Celine is at the center of a series of capital-I Incidents that stir sympathy for her, but also Alice’s paranoia. Does grief inspire or awaken malevolence? Or madness? I don’t have an answer for that, but this movie sure does.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Mothers’ Instinct finds a dull median lane cruising between Master of Melodrama Todd Haynes (think Far From Heaven or Carol or May December) and Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock (think Suspicion or, especially, suburban thriller Shadow of a Doubt). It’s also from a recent Dark Hathaway trend that includes odd films that don’t work at all – Serenity, The Last Thing He Wanted – or work quite well – Eileen, another fringe-noir mid-century drama.
Performance Worth Watching: Suffice to say that this version of Dark Hathaway lacks the oomph of her vampy turn in Eileen. Chastain is the de facto lead here anyway, and she manages to squeeze more credibility out of this klutzy screenplay than her co-star.
Memorable Dialogue: Is Alice gaslighting herself when she suspects Celine is effing with her? “She manipulates people – that’s what she does!” Alice exclaims. “And you don’t even see it.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: There are moments when you’re watching a movie and just say NAH to a plot. Some movies can survive one, maybe two NAHs before it launches off the ramp and clears the shark. But Mothers’ Instinct piles up so many NAHs down the home stretch, it’s a wildly impressive display of self-torpedoing. To say the third act is an utter hogslop mess is to grossly underplay the messiness of hog slop. Your eyes will roll and roll and roll like they were once on top of spaghetti.
Needless to say, Hathaway and Chastain do not deserve this screenplay. They’ve proved they can do anything, and this movie needs a deft hand to guide it toward the sweet spot between self-aware salacious thrillerdom and probing domestic drama. It considers itself straight-up serious, and convinces us of it for a while, as we contemplate the themes it quietly cultivates: Is there a right or wrong way to grieve? Can propriety be applied in the wake of tragedy? What sexist double standards emerge during such situations? I have a better question to pose, though – is the movie at all truly interested in this stuff? Once it sinks into a mire of convoluted silliness that should be OTT-campy melodrama but is too timid to lean into its own preposterousness, it screams its answer in our face: NAH.
Our Call: Considering the highly capable talent involved, Mothers’ Instinct is a major disappointment. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mothers’ Instinct’ on Hulu, in Which Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain Play Mid-Century Moms Working Through a Nutty Frenemies Phase appeared first on Decider.
