‘Nightbitch’ review – Amy Adams’ doggy fantasy satire remains fatally muzzled | Films

WDirector Marielle Heller pushes for the limits and beyond with this fantasy satire based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel, but deviates from half-hearted body horror and lets her wild growl become a purr of earnest approval for boring notions of solidarity between earth and mother.

As the leading lady, Amy Adams delivers perhaps the greatest and most ambitious performance of her professional career and is always very good. She plays a woman who was persuaded by her husband to give up her artistic career to work as a housewife to their lively little boy. As she falls deeper into boredom, depression and secret, growling anger, she also notices strange tufts of hair on her body and realizes that she is turning into a dog. Scoot McNairy is sturdy and believable as her husband, and there’s a nice cameo from Jessica Harper as local librarian Norma, who astutely sees her pain and potential inner strength in our heroine’s eyes.

The straightforward, realistic part of the film, sans canine fantasy, does a great job of illustrating how stressful and frightening life as an unsupportive parent can be. But the silly dog ​​scenes? The eerie look in the eyes, the sudden sense of smell that twitches the nose, the hunger for meat, the need to gallop in complete canine transformation to kill things under the cover of night? None of it is really scary or really funny because the film shys away from the transgressive extreme; Even Adams’ (well-staged) breakdown in a restaurant has no real consequences. Everything is firmly contained in the possibility that this is all just a liberating fantasy. The dog transformation is somehow always Dr. Jekyll, and her “night slut” personality honestly never becomes a very interesting metaphor for depression or midlife crisis. Nevertheless, there is no doubt about the sympathy and vehemence of Adams’ performance.