MOTHERS’ INSTINCT (15)
★★★✩✩
A mother’s love is a delicate rose with razor-sharp thorns in this handsome period psychological thriller.
Mothers’ Instinct pits Oscar winners Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway against each other in a Hitchcockian plot that tightens the screws on best friends as they wrestle with grief and guilt in the aftermath of a tragic accident.
Alice (Chastain) and Celine
(Hathaway) are next door neighbours, devoted to the upkeep of their impeccably furnished homes while their husbands Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Damian (Josh Charles) go out to work.
While traditionalist Damian works in the pharmaceutical industry and is sole breadwinner, Simon is more progressive, supporting Alice’s professional dreams so long as she continues her measured recovery from a mental health crisis.
The women’s parenting styles couldn’t be more different. Alice is overly protective of her son Theo (Eamon O’connell), who has a peanut allergy, while Celine is relaxed and poised with her boy Max
(Baylen D Bielitz).
A tragic fall from an upstairs balcony robs Celine of her only child and Alice is a guilt-riddled witness to the accident. Alice senses her best friend blames her for the devastating loss and paranoia poisons the relationship.
Celine requests to spend time with Theo as a coping mechanism, since she is unable to have more children.
The boy’s grandmother Jean (Caroline Lagerfelt) urges quietly worded caution and an increasingly unhinged Alice becomes convinced that Celine intends to seek revenge by killing Theo.
Mothers’ Instinct coolly bides its time, walking a tightrope between gnarly suspicion and incontrovertible fact.
Our distress matches the characters’ and Chastain and Hathaway deliver compelling performances that beg uncomfortable questions about their homemakers’ mental wellbeing and