TORONTO: As far as movie taglines go, this one is epic: “Motherhood is a bitch.” In director Marielle Heller’s latest feature, it is both literal and figurative.
“Nightbitch,” which premiered at the Toronto film festival late Saturday, stars Amy Adams as Mother, an artist who becomes a harried stay-at-home mom caring for a boisterous toddler while her husband travels often for business.
As she becomes increasingly isolated and overwhelmed, Mother starts hearing things in the night and sprouting unusual hair patches. Is she… turning into an actual dog?
Based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder of the same name, “Nightbitch” explores different facets of motherhood – the wonder and joy, but also the darkness and exhaustion – using equal doses of comedy, drama and magical realism.
The film is sure to strike a chord with millions of women who have had to make tough choices about parenting, careers and marriage – only to sometimes be left disappointed and resentful.
“We’re not very comfortable talking about female rage,” Heller said in a Q&A after the screening.
“It felt really good to kind of take this invisible experience that a lot of us have gone through and make it more visible.”
Heller is a veteran of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the largest in North America, which provides a showcase for Oscar bait movies, feel-good crowd pleasers, independent fare and timely documentaries.
This movie belongs to the 50-year-old Adams, a six-time Oscar nominee who digs her teeth into the role – pun intended – and may well be in next year’s awards conversation for her gritty, no-holds-barred performance.
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She fearlessly delivers inner monologues about the frustrations and mind-numbing monotony of being a mother, seethes as other kids scream during library story hour and paws at the ground on one of her nocturnal outings.
For Adams, parenthood is “a shared experience and yet it isn’t shared. So it’s such a gift to get to be a part of sharing that with you all,” she said at the Q&A.
Scoot McNairy, who plays Mother’s husband, offered his biggest takeaway from the experience: “Don’t mansplain motherhood.”
Paradise lost
Also making its world premiere in Toronto on Saturday was Oscar-winning director Ron Howard’s “Eden,” a survival thriller set in the Galapagos islands after World War I.
The film, starring Jude Law and Sydney Sweeney, is based on a true story of a small group of Europeans who sought a new life, away from society’s horrors and constraints.
Law plays Friedrich Ritter, who escapes to the island of Floreana with his partner Dora (Vanessa Kirby) to enjoy the solitude and write a manifesto.
But his letters, picked up by local boats, are published on the Continent, and others follow his lead to the island.
A young German couple (Sweeney and Daniel Bruehl) arrive, followed by self-described baroness Eloise (Ana de Armas), who has an entourage and dreams of building a high-end hotel.
Though the weather and the terrain prove challenging, the biggest hurdles to overcome stem from within the community itself.
“This is what these people lived through and I just found it fascinating, and I found it utterly human, and surprisingly relatable to human existence today, with all of its foibles, all its quirks,” Howard said in a Q&A session after the premiere.
Sweeney said it was “every actor’s dream” to work with the 70-year-old filmmaker, who won Oscars for best picture and director for 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind.”
The festival runs through September 15.
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