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It is significant where the apostrophe lies in this film’s title. It is Mothers’ Instinct, not mother’s. If mothers are held to pretty high standards, perhaps no one does that job better than a fellow mother. For, there is no getting this job right.
And certainly not in the American suburban 1960s, which Celine (Hathaway) and Alice (Chastain) inhabit. Perfectly dressed, coiffured, heeled at all times, lipstick and manicured nails in place, as they keep their neighbouring houses and adjacent lawns neat and clipped, and the hearth churning out perfectly baked canapes, they are there to stand by their husbands – and particularly their children.
Alice once expresses a desire to return to her job as a journalist, but they never return to the idea or her frustration over this life she leads again.
Alice and Celine are also the bestest of friends, the kind with access to each other’s homes, throwing each other surprise parties, husbands included, and wining and dining every other night, with their sons equally close.
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Then, tragedy strikes, Celine loses her child to an accidental fall that Alice tries her best to prevent and, as such events do, their world is not the same again.
The tension of Mothers’ Instinct, an adaptation of a Belgian film that itself was based on the French novel Derriere la haine, rests in the shifts that this world takes post the incident. At first, Celine seems unstable – shutting out Alice, with the latter’s son a constant reminder of the son she lost. A stare she gives Alice from behind a black veil is positively chilling.
Then Celine comes right back into their lives, not able to keep away. So is Celine up to something, or is the anxious, high-strung Alice imagining things? Their husbands, more open, accepting of each other (in a not-so-subtle cliche), can hardly cope, or wilfully turn a blind eye to what’s happening.
For all the often-illogical protectiveness that motherhood invokes, and all the unknown ways that grief strikes – though it does suggest how no one wants to be around a mourning parent – Mothers’ Instinct is almost too sun-bathed pastel and virginal vanilla to get the hands of its two women dirty. However, in their performances, Chastain and Hathaway pack enough switches to keep it interesting. Chastain, whose Alice wears her heart and fears on her sleeve, has the easier – and the meatier role. Hathaway, required to do perhaps too many tonal changes, isn’t as convincing at times.
In all this, you feel the most sorry for Alice’s son Theo, with O’Connell bringing a quiet sincerity to the confusion the eight-year-old feels over the role of Celine in their lives, without being mushy.
Mothers’ Instinct movie director: Benoît Delhomme
Mothers’ Instinct movie cast: Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Anders Danielsen Lie, Josh Charles, Eamon O’Connell
Mothers’ Instinct movie rating: 3 stars
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