French cinematographer Benoit Delhomme’s directorial debut is a tension-filled psychological thriller, with Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as its crowning jewels. The film’s beginning is fascinating, as is its production design, and yet it does not entirely deliver on its premise, making Mothers’ Instinct feel like a somewhat incomplete movie.
★★★☆☆
Mothers’ Instinct takes us back in time to a suburban American town in the 1960s,where Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Céline (Anne Hathaway) are next-door neighbours and close friends. The two women have sons of similar ages who go to the same school and spend a lot of time together, and their husbands are equally congenial. Everything seems to be going fairly well in the families’ lives—until the sudden death of Céline’s son. This drives the families away from each other as Céline’s becomes consumed by grief and guilt starts eating away at Alice’s mental wellbeing.
The production design in Mothers’ Instinct is particularly impressive. From the opening scene of the film, the audience is immediately catapulted into its setting, thanks to every little detail showcased in the movie, from period cars to the costumes of the time. The rooms in each of the houses look very lived-in as they subtly reveal the personalities and lives of the characters that inhabit them. By the end of the film, it feels like the audience could also easily move around the houses the protagonists live in as they have know become familiar settings for us too. The costumes stand out on their own, but also significantly contribute to the storytelling. The two mothers dress incredibly similarly, but, their differences are made more apparent as they begin to become associated with their own set of colours.
Chastain and Hathaway both deliver a masterclass in acting in this film; Although the script itself is sometimes weak, their performances elevate the original material and add depth to the characters. For the entire first half of the movie, it’s unclear who we should trust and which character’s side we should take—or if there are even any ‘sides’ at all. This uncertainty, enhanced when the characters thread a fine line between reality and paranoia, is where the film is at its very best.
That being said, the plot is very predictable overall. This is not necessarily a flaw: sometimes predictable films are a lot better than movies whose plot does not seem to make any sense. At the same time, for a thriller to be successful, surprise and ongoing tension are both essential. Mothers’ Instinct does well at building tension, especially in its first act, but as the film progresses it becomes easy to spot the twists and turns from a mile away. If the movie had kept the uncertainty around what is actually happening for longer, the audience would have been a lot more shocked by the end of it. This is most problematic as the film winds down; with the big twist revealed too early, any shock of the last act is entirely undermined.
The Verdict
A very strong first act and brilliant performances are not enough to save an otherwise very average film that gets overly predictable in its second half. As far as psychological thrillers go, there are better ones out there. Mothers’ Instinct is still an enjoyable watch,, but it’s hard not to wonder how different—and maybe better—the film could have been with just a few changes to its structure and storytelling.
Mothers’ Instinct is in cinemas now.
Words by Clotilde Chinnici
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