When I first heard about Nightbitch for some reason I thought it was a horror movie with Amy Adams morphing physically into a dog. It isn’t. Cujo can breathe easier now.
What was so surprising about this sweet, wise, and glowing tribute to mothers everywhere premiering at the Toronto Film Festival today, is how down to earth and real it is. It is funny, touching and very real despite the metaphysical aspect of Adams’ Mother character thinking her body has so deteriorated after childbirth and a case of postpartum depression that she turns basically into a dog. The movie does require her to dig and sniff around the garden in full Lassie mode, but it isn’t any kind of startling thing.
Adams also works opposite eight dogs in order to give the audience the full visual experience of this feeling. But that is not what Nightbitch is at heart. Mother, as she is only known, has given up her career and dreams after the birth of Son (as he is only known) a rambunctious 2-year-old (played by twins Arleigh Patrick & Emmett James Snowden) who wreaks havoc at any moment even as Husband (as he is known rather than father because he isn’t around much) tends to be blind to all of it.
Mother does it all to the point of pure exhaustion. On a trip to the library she meets three other suburban moms, bonded in pregnancy and motherhood, who scout this mother as one with real potential to join their clique — something she avoids, but they think she’s funny. But librarian Norma (Jessica Har.