Mothers’ Instinct, the debut feature from French cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (The Theory of Everything), is high on melodrama, but lacks bite. Pitting Hollywood heavy hitters Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway against each other in a histrionic battle royale, the film recalls the saturated style and drama of Douglas Sirk but fails to fully meet the mark.
Alice (Chastain) and Celine (Hathaway) are neighbours in a picture perfect nineteen sixties American suburb. Giant cars gleam in the driveway, rosebushes are trimmed to perfection, and their photogenic young sons are the best of friends. From the jump, Delhomme keeps the tension ramped up to eleven, telegraphing that all may not be as perfectly glossy and happy as it seems on the surface. A groan-worthy opening sequence sees Alice seemingly sneaking into Celine’s house on some kind of mysterious mission, only to be revealed to be throwing her a surprise birthday party. During the festivities, the boys sneak off with a box of peanut butter cookies in a contrivance offering a dual revelation: Alice’s son Theo (Eamon Patrick O’Connell) has a deathly allergy to peanuts (file that one away for later), and she’s a bit of a stress case. As the party dwindles into evening, tensions between the wives and their husbands (Josh Charles and Anders Danielsen Lie) start to simmer below the surface. Alice pines for her past life as a journalist, but Celine cherishes her life in the suburbs, satisfied with caring for her miracle child, Max (Baylen D. Bielitz).
The next day, Max, under the weather, stays home from school. As Alice works in the garden, she spots him teetering on the edge of the back deck, trying to hang a birdhouse he made at school. She rushes to save him, shouting for Celine who hears nothing over the sound of her vacuum cleaner, but arrives too late. Max falls to his death on the pavement below, setting the events of the film in motion. Celine and her husband Damian (Charles) are understandably devastated, but seem to harbour some resentment towards Alice, perhaps blaming her for being unable to prevent his death. In the ensuing days, Celine completely unravels, dons the most over the top black lace veil I have ever seen, and is sent away to a sanatorium to recover from her grief. Upon her return she is clearly fragile, but seems to have set aside her resentment towards Alice, and begins to cultivate a disturbingly close relationship with Theo.
While Celine does an able job of convincing most of those around her that she is little more than a vulnerable mother grieving the loss of the only son child she will ever have (complications in childbirth having rendered her infertile), Alice’s instincts are on full alert. More than once, she flies off the handle, suspecting that Celine is out for some kind of revenge against her. Chastain does a great job at convincing us that Alice may have become truly unhinged, and her ability to push the audience to question her sanity is perhaps the strongest element of the film. I hesitate to reveal too many of the film’s twists and turns (what would be the fun in that?), but suffice it to say none of them are terribly surprising. However, as each suspicious occurrence seems to point directly to Celine, only Alice seems to be able to see through her brittle façade. It all seems a bit hard to swallow. Perhaps Hathaway is simply too skilled at projecting the volcanic rage raging under the surface of her placid suburban housewife.
As the film careens towards its preposterous (and disappointingly predictable) conclusion, I found myself wishing Delhomme had given us more reason to question what might actually be happening. As it stands, despite Chastain and Hathaway’s best efforts, the narrative path of the film offers too little in the way of depth or mystery. Feeling wholly implausible without offering enough sheer entertainment to ignore its structural shortcomings, Mothers’ Instinct feels like a missed swing at the classic melodramas of Bette Davis or Joan Crawford that the film’s leads probably hoped they were signing up for. Better luck next time ladies.
Mothers’ Instinct is currently streaming on Amazon Primevideo.
© 2020-2024. UniversalCinema Mag.