More than the performances, I felt ‘Mothers’ instinct’ is absolute trash on its own. Some things are inherently pleasurable like the sight of two great actresses fighting in a melodramatic fairytale. However, director Benoit Delhomme (the brilliant cinematographer who was behind the camera for “A Most Wanted Man”, “At Eternity’s Gate”, etc. and many other titles) does not know what to aim towards. The best it could be describes as is what was often referred to as a ‘woman’s picture’ which evolved from movies like ‘Leave Her to Heaven’ or ‘Gaslight’. This film is infused in these sharp currents of sorrow which suggests other more conventional contemporary sorrow drama but confuses itself with its ridiculous third act. But amidst this tonal mish mash of the film are two impressive performances by two women who would be drawn to what ‘Mothers Instinct’ might have been with a stronger perspective and more control in the story.
‘Mothers’ Instinct’, co-written by Anne Fontaine and based on a film by a French director called ‘Duelles’, is a Hollywood drama set in the 1960s America. In this setting, people are so fashioned to the extent that their women are always beautifully dressed and their men tied in neckties. According to a screenplay by Sarah Conradt, the film Delhomme focuses almost exclusively on the homes of two women: Alice played by Jessica Chastain and Celine played by Anne Hathaway. In the film’s opening with somewhat hasty pacing, our attention is drawn to the husbands, Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Damian (Josh Charles). Implications of strained relationships are noted in both marriages and it is further explained how Celine and Damian have had some desiring attempts to bear their only son, Max (Baylen D. Bielitz). During Peter’s playing with Alice & Simon’s son Theo at the house, we have a impression that Theo is allergic to the peanuts and Chekhov’s Cookie’s Law suggests know who has a nut allergy never reveals it. (In any case, describing it in a film this meticulously constructed is absolute tautology.)
Through a window, one day, Alice is looking out and notices a young boy called Max dangling a birdhouse he crafted from school on a railing of his family’s third floor balcony.
Panic begins to clench around her throat as she attempts to run along some goofy shortcut between both houses that those children created. Unfortunately, as his mother is in the house, vacuuming the floor, Max jumps to his death. Naturally, both women have come unstrung and see black all over the place. Celine’s hysteria results from emerging despair of a lost child. On the other hand, Max’s mother Alice is not fully satisfied whether she made a real effort to shout Max before he actually jumped. This film, which is covered with Hitchcock-esque suspenseries has an incredibly sorrowful air underneath it the air about what the life would be like for the people left behind when everything they know and love is destroyed. How could you go from one moment to the next?
How can one let the hunter and game combination to exist in the same space?
Surprisingly, the question Alex has often tormented seeks to clarify how Celine’s released emotions are unmatched. Without providing spoilers, Max is not the final one to die in these families and the only one voicing such concerns is Alice. “Mothers’ Instinct” in its midsection shifts from morbid reality to where Celine has become the center of attention.
Was it Alice’s conjecture of suspicion that has been abetted by nothing other than her guilt? Hathaway and Chastain are just wonderful in this midstructure, including my favorite line delivery of the former in her entire career. With her performance in the superior “Eileen” and now this, Hathaway really proves how she belongs in a different era of Hollywood, and I am all for it. While both performers at times tend towards theatricals, they are subdued as the script demands – actually supporting the movie with their each of the captivating choices as performers.
And yet, with regard to the final third of the film, that evolving frustration as to what “Mothers’ Instinct” is trying to be comes across as a rather significant flaw. It attempts to be Sirk and Hitch simultaneously, but it has neither the richness of the former nor the teeth of the latter, which is why some of the truly insane decisions of the ending are unfortunately jarring. Placing the film into a more developed sense of tension may have also worked, as it is a film that too frequently appears to be pounding along from plot twist to plot twist because it is only 94 minutes long, when allowing its mysteries more time to develop would be more effective. In the end, it is perhaps one of the very few films which fails to capture a single mood consistently through and through, with the result that its perfect leading ladies remain in a film which has so much to offer them but fails to give them enough room within the emotional framings to do anything other than be circumscribed by such a film.
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