MOTHERS' INSTINCT
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Anders Danielsen Lie, Josh Charles, Eamon O'Connell, Caroline Lagerfelt, and Baylen D. Bielitz
Director: Benoît Delhomme
KATIE
I love Anne Hathaway nearly as much as I love a good old-fashioned melodrama, so I had a great time with Mothers’ Instinct. This operatic, Hitchcockian psychological thriller plays out against the backdrop of The Feminine Mystique-inspired tension, complete with immaculate set design and costuming of artificially perfect 1960s suburbia and amazing lead performances from Jessica Chastain and Hathaway. Whilst the film is heavy-handed and doesn’t meaningfully explore its themes of grief or the pressures of the housewives’ lives, it is full of tension and is deliciously overbaked. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a stylish, suspenseful drama.
QUENTIN
Despite Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain doing everything they can to will a great movie out of Mothers’ Instinct, not to mention the wonderful 60s-era production design, this Hitchcockian thriller suffers from an identity crisis. It’s so self-serious that it fails to embrace the campier elements, yet it’s too campy to take any of the darker moments all that seriously. This results in a movie that flails between somewhat cheesy Lifetime-style melodrama and Revolutionary Road-ish weightiness. That said, flawed as it may be, there are worse things to watch than two terrific and impeccably dressed actresses go head-to-head in a battle of paranoia and psychological warfare.
PRESTON
Mothers’ Instinct takes advantage of the 1960s setting (especially with the fantastic production design) of a stereotypical suburban lifestyle to mask the eventual outcome and advance the building tension. It is a back-and-forth psychological thriller that makes you wonder who the real antagonist is, and it takes its time in developing complexity in the characters. Anne Hathaway (Celine) and Jessica Chastain (Alice) are both captivating talents that are an absolute pleasure to watch, but the primary deficiency is an ending that feels a little rushed compared to the deliberate build-up to an otherwise enjoyable, but dark story.
