Mothers' Instinct

One of the quieter movies released this year was Mothers’ Instinct starring Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. These smaller production studios have been releasing truly fantastic films. But there is more to independent film than A24, Neon has been doing some really incredible work this year and this film is simply one of many. The stars of the show also have producer credit on the film, which is a great sign it shows that the actors are invested in the story that they are telling.

We open with tension. The music tells us that something eerie is going on. Our setting, costumes and hair/makeup design is all very stepford. Which is also kind of inherently creepy.

10 minutes in and the film is already doing a fantastic job of establishing this friendship and reflecting what it was like to be a woman in the 50s. The film is biting off a lot. We now have a grieving mother, a woman who wants to go back to work, and a really close friendship that now has to survive the death of a child. I’m not saying that the film can’t explore all of these elements, but it is a lot. So we will see how it handles wrapping all of these things up.

Anne Hathaway portrays just absolutely wrecked really well. She wears grief on her face so distinctly. She is clearly losing it after the death of her son.

We jump to a month later and Seline passes out at a school function that she really had no business being at as she no longer has any kids.

Theo’s my favorite. He is the absolute sweetest little boy. I love him. The fact that he lost his best friend makes me so sad.

So not only did this poor woman have trouble conceiving, but she lost her only child and she can’t have more kids. So that’s all my worst fears. Those are literally the worst things that can happen to a person, all wrapped up into one person.

And then Alice is clearly suffering some kind of mental break since the death of her friend's son. We are telling a beautiful story about how the loss of a child affects a parent, survivors guilt, and then that complicated friend relationship between the friend that was happy being a mom but loses her son, and the friend who wanted more than motherhood, a job and gets to keep her kid.

Now poor Seline has this grandmother telling her to kick rocks. Like she gets a say at all in how this woman deals with her grief. These women were really close friends outside of their kids, so why are we acting like now that Seline doesn’t have a child that their friendship is just over? That’s really aggressive.

This is basically an updated version of Gaslight. Alice knows that Seline is trying to take her family away from her but without any evidence she just sounds crazy. And because her family is in danger she is becoming a little crazy.

Mothers’ Instinct does a great job of subtly building tension throughout the film. The ending was somewhat unexpected and entirely brilliant. I love the way that they stuck to the genre, as far as thrillers go this was definitely one of the better recent ones. Hathaway does an incredible job of playing the grieving, gaslighting mother and Chastain was the best at going batshit crazy. These women played off of each other so well and delivered a truly remarkable story. If this genre was something the academy recognized it would certainly be all over the awards.