For around sixty minutes of its running time, NIGHTBITCH is a film that has the following messages: giving birth is physically savage; transitioning from being an urban career woman to a suburban stay-at-home mum is emotionally savage; and your still-at-work husband is probably going to have trouble empathising. As messages go it’s not rocket science or particularly new but in Amy Adams hands it is compelling and wonderfully playing against type. How marvellous to see her lean into spite and anger and animalistic power and feminist separation! And so the film should have continued.
But, the film does continue and it bottles it. The message of the back end of the film seems to be that actually being a single mum and mounting an art exhibition is, in fact, super easy, and a dickhead husband can suddenly become super-supportive, and one can be happy and have it all in suburban Williams-Sonoma bliss!
I blame writer-director Marielle Heller (A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD) for her milquetoast approach both to the early doors body horror and the messaging of the back end. I also felt that for a single-issue movie it’s about 20 mins too long.
It makes for an interesting contrast with yesterday’s superb SISTER MIDNIGHT, which had similar-ish subject matter but has far more imagination and conviction.
NIGHTBITCH is rated R and has a 98 minute running time. It played Toronto and London 2024. It opens in the USA on December 6th.
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