Marielle Heller is one of the most accomplished talents in Hollywood. She’s an award-winning director, screenwriter, and actress to boot. Amy Adams is one of our very best actresses, capable of drama, comedy, and even musicals. The Chicago International Film Festival screened their joint effort this past week at the Music Box Theater, and it was a standing-room-only house to see NIGHTBITCH. (Now, there’s a title!) The crowd ate it up and the film is sure to stand as a crowd-pleaser and one of 2024’s sharpest comedies.
Amy Adams plays the main character, known simply as Mother on the IMDB credits page. Obviously, she is meant to be a universal figure for all mothers like the one here is valiantly balancing motherhood, marriage, and housekeeping. Heller’s biting screenplay, based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder, pulls no punches by showing the lead character battling all kinds of obstacles in her harried existence and often dancing on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Mother here is angry, depressed, overstimulated, exhausted, and quietly furious with her self-involved hubby (Scoot McNairy). It’s all very understandable and pitiable, sometimes even cringey, but Heller manages to find the humor in most of it. The story often feels like a variation on DIARY OF A MAD HOUSEWIFE from 1970 in its way, only here it’s showcasing how being one is even more fraught today. NIGHTBITCH is brutally honest, often hilarious, and frequently heartbreaking.
That’s because Heller and Adams are both serious artists. Even in their most LOL screen efforts, there always remains a tinge of pathos in what they’re doing. These are women full of empathy for what they’re portraying and it’s evident throughout this very personal film they’ve both made together. And yet, Heller is also a filmmaker who’s no stranger to fantastical flourishes so she adds sparkle to even the darkest moments with outrageous fantasy moments, including a recurring one where Mother imagines herself turning into a dog at night (hence the title) who can eat ravenously, bay at the moon, and run with wild abandon in the streets. It’s a metaphor for breaking free of a suffocating existence and it plays like gangbusters.
Adams gives the role her all, and it may very well be her most accomplished performance. She covers so many emotions, and so much physicality, exuding a rawness and vulnerability that is palpable. It’s a little disconcerting how her character acts out, something that Adams rarely does in her films. Even when she was out there in the miniseries SHARP OBJECTS as a pathetic and frightening antihero, she had scenes where she had to dig a hole in the front yard, eat raw meat from a dog bowl, and attack a bunny rabbit. Yowza!
Being an actress gives Heller an advantage with her cast and she gets nuanced and memorable work out of every actor. It was wonderful to see Jessica Harper back on the big screen too, playing a wise librarian with some droll advice for our heroine. (BTW… you should watch for Heller’s cameo in the first minute as a short-fused mom in a grocery store. Quite amusing.)
NIGHTBITCH might make you uneasy at times as it boldly faces the truths marring this lost soul’s life, all the elements of her troubled marriage, not to mention a challenging child and her own self-loathing. But the filmmaker and Adams’ unshakeable likability keeps it from becoming unseemly. It even feels hopeless at its darkest. Certain scenes may make you squirm like a few scenes that show Heller’s clear lack of love for cats. (She wasn’t kind to felines either in her Oscar-nominated CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?) And while Heller overemphasizes the symbolism here and there, it’s never enough to muck up the works.
Ultimately, the film is a howl in the darkness as well as a plea for society to not take women or motherhood for granted. And despite some feminist overtones, it’s a film with enough universal truths for all types to appreciate and be entertained by in the telling. Heller and Adams have delivered a very provocative film, a high-water mark for both, and a sure conversation starter. See it with your spouse or significant other and then enjoy talking about it for hours afterward.
