Nightbitch – exhausted mum by day, cuddly dog killing other animals and burying them in the garden by night (Belfast Film Festival at Queen’s Film Theatre) #BFF24

Amy Adams plays a mum who stays at home to rear her toddler while her husband (Scoot McNairy) travels far and wide with his work. Hearing Mum’s inner monologue builds empathy. Recognising the heaven-twinned-with-hell nature of the weekly Book Babies meetup only consolidates our understanding of her frustration at managing the wee lad all on her own.

The first sign of something odd is the way dogs are playfully attracted to her when she’s out in the park. The title Nightbitch (taken from Rachel Yoder’s novel) sums up the magic realism* element of the movie. In the evenings, the longest part of any parent’s day, Mum intermittently turns into a dog and will slip out the front door and go for a trot around the neighbourhood, killing other animals, digging holes in the garden. The soil under her fingernails and the mess she makes in the shower are hard to explain to her husband. *It’s firmly in the magic realism and stops well short of proper body horror, shying away from the gruesome end of her nocturnal activities, yet still ends up with an R rating in the US!

Twin boys Arleigh and Emmett Snowden play the part of the toddler, with gorgeous naturalistic footage of them playing with Adams. Norma the librarian who makes special book recommendations adds older wisdom (and yet more mystery) to the story, a beautiful performance by Jessica Harper.

Nightbitch is a tad confusing. Permission to just get on with believing that Mum can become a dog at night is never quite implicitly granted by director Marielle Heller, so for considerable parts of the film I found myself waiting for a giant metaphor to be revealed. Instead, the takeaways seem as simple as parenting isn’t easy, parenting on your own is really hard work and changes your whole sense of self even more than how other people perceive you … oh, and men are simply insensitive, inconsiderate, and very self-absorbed. A filmmaker doesn’t really need 98 minutes of screentime to rehearse those concepts. Yet there is much to enjoy.

The cat skeletons are visually inventive, along with lots of biting asides and commentary: “What happened to my wife? / (whispered) She died in childbirth.”

While Nightbitch looks at motherhood from a perspective of what it can force someone to give up, the more interesting lesson would perhaps be to talk about what doesn’t have to be given up if others step up to provide support. Screened in the QFT as part of Belfast Film Festival, there’s a good chance that Nightbitch may reappear in one or more local cinemas in December or January.

 

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