Written by: Sarah Conradt
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Josh Charles, Anders Danielsen Lie
Rating: [2/5]
No parent should ever have to bury their child. An experience and pain so cruel that understandably leaves an unbearable impact on parents as a life they have raised did not outlive them. One could easily grasp why the aftermath of this would leave the parents in a place where they display disconcerting actions given that their life has completely flipped. However, what we witness in Mothers’ Instinct reaches an insane level of strangeness as grief plays out in a very dangerous manner.
Each with their own child, best friends Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Céline (Anne Hathaway) live right next door to each other and enjoy each other’s company. One day, with Céline’s son home sick from school, Alice notices him playing on the balcony of his home and tries to warn her best friend of this, but it’s too late as the young boy falls to his death. Distraught with what has transpired, Céline not so subtly continues to blame Alice for what happened.
With reason, Mothers’ Instinct contains so much sadness. It features such a terrifying and traumatic circumstance for all involved. Céline losing her son through such an innocent manner where she could not hear because of her vacuuming completely wraps her around with an inescapable guilt. If only she paid attention to the location of her son, she would still have him today. However, at least in Céline’s eyes, she does not hold the blame alone, as despite Alice’s best efforts to adequately warn her, the boy still died. This tension between the characters sets the stage for the rest of the film as the distance between them widens and the paranoia and mistrust are amplified greatly.
Taking place in the 1960s, this film certainly seeks to play into a distinct melodramatic style from the heightened emotions to the overall aesthetic. Prior to the inciting incident, these women lived the classic, often romanticized lifestyle of a suburban stay-at-home mother. This setting hosts many of the great melodramatic films in history, and perhaps this feature would have been better served by taking more from those films rather than maintaining this ultra-serious tone. You can understand the attempt given the seriousness of the topic at hand, but as the story continues and the paranoia heightens, something just feels off about the film.
This becomes increasingly clear when we reach the conclusion of the story, and it makes a completely shocking turn that raises larger questions about what this film sought to accomplish as a whole. Decision after decision made by these characters as the film reaches the final act leaves much to be desired, but whatever intended effect they sought to produce through the shocking turns it takes just completely left me aghast. It turned the film from something quite middling to actively mediocre. Learning since viewing this film that it’s a remake from a Belgian film released not too long ago makes you wonder if perhaps it’s another example of something getting lost in translation when trying to recreate a story through a particularly American lens. It would certainly not be the first time this has happened.
While the overall narrative of this film disappointed, at the very least Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway came to play as they knew the setting and material they signed onto and decided they wanted to eat up the scenery. Whatever the script needed from them, they certainly delivered as the anger and the paranoia reverberated from them towards each other. Seeing these two acting opposite of each other proved to be quite the treat as something we never knew we needed but needs to happen more often, and for the most part it was entertaining until the story completely got away from them.
An overall dud despite its hard-hitting topic and strong setup, Mothers’ Instinct loses its juice and completely falls over itself by the end. While never having a strong control of its tone, this film could have used some of the melodrama it sought to emulate through its aesthetic and filmmaking style. It all comes across as a misfire where a firmer grasp on the potential at hand could have made for something much better, but in the end, the final product shows itself as a film that just does not work.
Films with Josh 
