
It has been over fifty years since Helen Reddy sung, “I am woman, hear me roar!” but the same principle can be applied when talking about Amy Adams’ fierce lead performance in Marielle Heller’s more understated “Nightbitch.” In the credits, Adams is only listed as ‘Mother’, and the character is someone who devoted all her time to her son but is only now realizing, after four years of being a stay-at-home mom ‘What happened to her’. Instead of saying, she has been ‘transformed’, it would be quite appropriate to say, she has been ‘awakened’ as she channels these dormant powers of a werewolf that have been inside her since forever. She believes she might be changing into a dog the mighty canine.
Rachel Yoder’s novel begins, “for my mom and for all the moms”. To some that might appear as something reproachful ‘males (and childless cat lady readers) stay away from this place’ which is ironic because the book has something for everyone. As is the case with Yoder’s book, Heller darky doesn’t fit the stereotype for most mundane mothers as with the understanding as it is the most natural impulse a woman has, that connects to everything but animals. It is also a strange unwritten rule for society that gives women no choice but to tackle its burdens single-handedly.
It appears that mothers, like Adams’ Mother, are wrongfully perceived. Adams’ Mother is confused, understandably so. While her less than supportive, but care giving husband (Scoot McNairy) goes missing for countless days, she is all alone to drag their Son (the blond toddlers Emmett James Snowdon and Arleigh Patrick Snowdon take turns playing the role) up.
All those mothers out there can sleep with their spouses comfortably until tomorrow. Around a certain boy who is always hungry: he has no time to spare for what is out there mother feeds him, the mother cleans, mom walks him in parks and libraries where it doesn’t really matter because in any circumstances, children’s mothers are not decipherable—for some reason, three moms (Mary Holland, Archana Rajan, and Zoe Chao) are overly friendly to them in a motherly way so that there is no need for any words as if being a mother is some sort of their collective life-transforming experience, which it probably is. Adams’ persona, on the other hand, doesn’t enjoy other women at all, which makes her the most intense loner in the world.
As soon as she meets other mothers, Mother’s first response is to dive into topics ‘that people don’t discuss’ (e.g. ‘people don’t discuss the change which takes place on a cellular level’). Is it really so hush-hush or is this woman simply outside the loop? On those days when Father is absent, even when she is given a chance to talk to him over the phone, she will not do it. And she never sits down in front of a computer screen. But when it is time for the research, she does not request the librarian (an enigmatically smart Jessica Harper) for a manual how to be a mother’ but for ‘A Field Guide to Witches, composed of chapters about the ‘bird women of Peru’ or something like that.
Often humorous, “Nightbitch” arguably limits its storytelling scope in a way that helps drive its central message home (Mother now perceives her life confinement to a single role). Not every society is so insensitive at what pregnant women give of themselves — even though that is exactly what a certain victim of patriarchy so abhors. In a fearless performance, Adams channels Mother’s frustration as she would her meat, tearing into a complete trust in the humor of every situation. For Mother, the struggle of reigning in the lost woman of “childbirth,” the woman she cannot even remember, is a drastic challenge in self-transformation.
Over a voice which can be mistaken for America Ferrera’s Barbie voice-over, only this one takes its time and stretches throughout the movie, Adams gives voice to all the grievances of this woman a city artist and curator who now spends her time finger painting alongside a toddler: “How many men have postponed their weaknesses and how many of their women had no idea what to do with their span of greatness?” In much the same way that speech by Barbie was given shockingly, there is Heller’s writing, it is straightforward and truly self-evident and yet completely required to be narrated.
There’s always a false sense of celebration with what being a mother signifies, yet society, for the most part, does not do much to support it (be it the provision of minimal maternity leave or the Mother taking on way too much to try to persuade the Father to help her out). However, this doesn’t come as shocking news; after all, the weight of ‘Nightbitch’ which is humanized in the film never gets represented in majority films unless it is a single father figure, such as in ‘Mr Mom‘ or ‘Mrs Doubtfire. Here, Adams gets to almost look tired. What makeup the star’s Heller applies on her only depicts a more stressed out looking woman who is, or rather was, more hairy than usual when she suddenly felt soft white fur growing on her lower back and little fuzzes of hair on her lips.
That’s the early indication of potential transformations accompanied by “lycanthropy”. The second hint about this ability comes on the swing set, as she brings forth astonishingly three strange dogs out of nowhere. The next thing she remembers, she is being worshipped by the neighborhood dogs, who bury food treasures under plants while her son discovers a decayed rat and brown stinking “poos” near her doorway. Sometimes, though it was taken from a paranormal folklore, ‘Nightbitch’ is nearly a mix of an autobiography with a self-help book, where Mother remembers her little girl days with all the drama her life had.
Now she has reunited with her own mother “& all the mothers” as she recalls (or recalls recreating) the night when she, like a ‘nightbitch’, scampered off into the forest on all fours. One of these words Mother employs in her humor when talking to her husband in the morning, and it begins to grow like a cancer in her psyche. But Heller aims to soothe rather than to disturb, who intends to terrify the audience. This isn’t a horror drama so much as a life lesson for every parent who has gone through the exact same scenario after their first newborn was born.
When Mother eventually does shift shape on screen, a rather clever moment that literally just focuses on her back, her feet and her tail, she is both reconnecting with the animal world and seeking relief from her copious parental roles even if just for a few hours. Things between Mother and Father are put on hold, albeit temporarily, after what is undoubtedly an intense argument takes place. He’s in charge for a few hours, and in that period, she begins creating again. Beneath the metaphysical rhetoric of the film, Nightbitch gradually reveals itself to be a rather powerful anti feminist piece.
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