Film Reviews: Nightb*tch is a powerful celebration of motherhood's taboos

Ovid’s mission statement in Metamorphoses was to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange, and two millennia later his influence remains undimmed. 

Nightbitch (15A) stars Amy Adams as an unnamed Mother, who gloomily describes herself as ‘the worst mother in the world’ even though she has willingly parked her artistic ambitions to commit to the relentless grind of being a stay-at-home mom, single-handedly raising her young Son (played by twins Arleigh and Emmett Snowden) while her Husband (Scoot McNairy) travels for work. 

That she passionately loves her son is a given, but Mother is worn to shreds by the gruelling monotony of domestic chores and infantile interactions; meanwhile, she’s also expending a considerable amount of precious energy on suppressing the white-hot rage that has been building for quite some time (“I’d kill to spend some time at home with him,” says Husband, blissfully unaware of how close Mother is to committing homicide on the spot). 

So while Mother is initially repulsed when she starts to exhibit some canine characteristics – elongated teeth; a faint furriness on her lower back; an unusually sharp sense of smell – she gradually begins to lean into the feral nature of a metamorphosis that allows her to revel in her animal instincts. 

Adapted from Rachel Yoder’s novel by writer-director Marielle Heller, Nightbitch is a wonderfully unsentimental deep-dive into the realities of motherhood. The old Hollywood saw about never working with children or animals gets short shrift here: Amy Adams is brilliant in her interactions with the endearingly unaffected young Snowden twins, and wholly embraces a role that joyously reclaims the epithet ‘bitch’ with a characterisation that finds Mother emerging from a post-partum fugue state to redefine her relationship with the world on her own terms. 

Blending mythology, psychology and magic realism into the prosaic joys and travails of being a mother – viewers who are squeamish about bodily fluids might want to avoid this one – Nightbitch is occasionally a little on the nose as Mother delivers her brutal truths in a voiceover internal monologue. 

For the most part, though, this is a powerful celebration of one woman’s exploration of the taboos of motherhood. (theatrical release)

• Rumours
• ★★★★☆
• In cinemas

Set at the heart of a G7 summit held in rural Germany, Rumours (15A) opens with the leaders of the world’s liberal democracies – among them Hilda (Cate Blanchett), Edison (Charles Dance), Sylvain (Denis Ménochet) and Tatsuro (Takehiro Hira) – devising an official response to the ‘difficult circumstances of the present crisis.’ 

What that particular crisis might be is quickly forgotten when the group finds itself lost in the woods and stalked by what appear to be the resurrected ‘bog bodies’ of historical human sacrifices, whereupon the genteel diplomacy is swiftly jettisoned and our political titans are revealed to be utterly useless in the face of a truly existential crisis. 

Written and directed by Evan Johnson, Guy Maddin and Galen Johnson, Rumours isn’t exactly Swiftian satire – then again, it’s all surreally tongue-in-cheek, as the camp performances and Kristian Eidnes Andersen’s archly exaggerated score confirms. 

Good fun, for those of an eschatological bent.

• That Christmas
• ★★★☆☆
• Netflix

Opening on Christmas Eve in the English village of Wellington-on-Sea, That Christmas (G) is a charming animation that finds a number of young children in a variety of tricky spots that only Santa can resolve – always providing, of course, that Santa can navigate his way through the fierce blizzard that has unexpectedly struck. 

Santa is voiced by Brian Cox, and Bill Nighy, Fiona Shaw and Jodie Whitaker also lend their voice talents to a sweet-natured, beautifully detailed yarn that deals with anxiety, loneliness and separation issues as it gently but firmly reiterates the old wisdom that it takes a village to raise a child. 

It’s unlikely to become a perennial classic, but That Christmas is an amiable celebration of community that certainly captures the festive spirit.