Mummy's curse
| Published date | 29 March 2024 |
| Publication title | Huddersfield Daily Examiner |
In Mothers' Instinct, a psychological thriller that's a remake of Olivier Masset-Depasse's 2018 French-language film, Anne Hathaway stars as a mother consumed by grief. Initially, her character, Celine, seems to have the perfect life: a beautiful home in 1960s suburbia, right next door to her best friend Alice, played by Jessica Chastain, who has a son the same age as her own.
But one day, tragedy strikes: her son Max dies in an awful accident, shattering the life she's built with her husband Damian, played by Josh Charles. Alice witnesses the horrific event from her garden, and despite her race next door to save the young boy from his death, she arrives too late.
Alice is racked with guilt for being unable to save Max, and it becomes increasingly clear that Celine, in her grief, also blames her friend for not rescuing her son. Their dynamic is forever changed by the tragedy - Celine is unable to have any more children, and Alice's son Theo serves as a constant reminder of what she's lost.
Slowly, Alice starts to experience what may, or may not, be paranoid delusions that Celine is seeking revenge, with mysterious goings-on correlating with the grieving mother's ailing mental state. Has Celine been driven to the unthinkable by her grief, or is Alice's paranoia down to her own psychological fragility?
"I thought that motherhood was an accessible lens to explore the thing that I was really interested in, which is what happens when we box people in based on what we want them to be, what happens when we assign an identity to someone based on how it looks, not based on what their actual experience is," says Anne, 41, of the intricacies of the story in Mothers' Instinct.
I found interesting loving another being, who control over Jessica "And then, specifically, what happens when we do not provide women with a vocabulary, and then we don't listen to them as they express themselves with the vocabulary that they have.
"Combined with the stakes of a mother experiencing grief, I thought that was going to be heartbreaking, interesting and fruitful to explore."
The English-language version of Mothers' Instinct expands upon its French predecessor by delving into the sexual politics of 1960s suburban
America. Both Alice and Celine seem to represent the perfect picket-fence nuclear families, taking care of the household while their husbands are out at work and keeping up impeccable appearances, but as their layers are...
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