Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Wait, there was a movie that pitted Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain against each other on-screen and it flew under the radar? Sometimes, there’s a reason movies like Mothers’ Instinct (now available to rent or purchase through VOD services like Prime Video) get buried. It’s rarely a good sign.
MOTHER’S INSTINCT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Celine (Anne Hathaway) share a lot as neighbors in a quaint American suburb at mid-century. They have young children the same age who are constant playmates, making their lives inextricably intertwined. What they share in joy — as well as lingering disappointment that this might be the ceiling of their ambitions — they soon come to share in grief when Alice fails to cajole Celine’s son Max off their roof before he plummets to his death.
This loss opens a chasm between the two friends, but more than just grief comes to fill it. A series of suspicious events catch Alice’s attention and make her wonder if Celine is out for revenge. Alice begins to see death and deceit around every corner, ratcheting up the tensions in an already tense situation. But who will ultimately face harsher consequences in a world unforgiving to women: the one who speaks up, or the one who steps out of line?
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s like watching Far from Heaven, Todd Haynes’ tribute and rejoinder to ‘50s melodrama, but with a slapped-on genre twist.
Performance Worth Watching: Mothers’ Instinct has many faults, but its pair of headlining performances are not among them. Of the two leading ladies, it’s Anne Hathaway who shines slightly brighter because she gets to show more emotional range — and at least seems to somewhat understand what the movie is going for. Jessica Chastain, on the other hand, plays it a bit more mannered and studied.
Memorable Dialogue: “Is it enough for you, this life?” Alice asks Celine in a moment of heart-to-heart reflectiveness before the rift opens up between them. The line hints at the dissatisfaction lurking under the surface that might motivate these two women to act in unusual ways.
Sex and Skin: Two scenes of purely procreative sex are accordingly filmed with such cloistered passion: the shoulders of Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie), the leg of Alice.
Our Take: Mothers’ Instinct has the sketches of an interesting movie but little of the substance. It’s like cinematographer Benoît Delhomme, making his directorial debut, only shot half the script. The film consists of nothing but the obvious, maudlin sections that convey plot movement and has none of the nuanced scenes that would need to follow and redeem them. (This is not an exaggeration: Hathaway does perfume commercials with a stronger sense of their own identity than this movie has.) Try as they might to overcome the weakness of the writing, even actresses as gifted as Hathaway and Chastain cannot reconcile the wild discrepancies of their characters. Scenes vacillate wildly between the women being empowered and them being helpless victims. It’s tough to #GIRLBOSS while doing tradwife cosplay!
Our Call: SKIP IT. The mothers of Mothers’ Instinct are not mothering. If you aren’t chronically online, here’s the translation: the film is all but a disaster because it never sells in the pivot from melodrama to psychological thriller, and everything falls apart from the failed handover. And if that’s not enough, it commits the Saltburn sin of explaining things that didn’t need explanation at all. (Ambiguity is a friend of storytelling!) If your instinct is to steer clear of this movie, listen to it.
Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.
