Noemie Merlant tackles mother lode of horror in ‘Baby Ruby’
What is a mother’s worst fear? Perhaps, there so many you can’t begin to name them?
“Baby Ruby,” Friday’s psychological horror entry, goes into an extended dissection to track firsttime mother Jo (Noémie Merlant), who struggles mightily with her many fears.
Even before her daughter Ruby is born (with no complications), Jo is worried she isn’t going to be a perfect mother. At home, while her husband (Kit Harington, “Game of Thrones”) is often away at work, she has difficulty coping with the infant’s virtually nonstop crying.
It gets worse — even before anyone dares mention post-partum depression. Jo feels her baby has teeth and is biting her as she breastfeeds. That’s physically impossible. Worse, perhaps, she feels the baby is punishing her with her willful screaming and crying.
Jo starts to hallucinate with vivid images that she’s angrily hurling her baby in the air. As she loses control she becomes more obsessive and delusional.
Motherhood in “Baby Ruby” really becomes a horror show.
“I read the script and I was, Wow! This movie is incredible!” Merlant, 34, said in her French-accented English in a Zoom interview.
A rising star since her breakthrough in the French hit, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (2019), she is currently on view as Cate Blanchett’s assistant in the Oscar-nominated Best Picture “Tar” and has completed filming a WWII drama opposite Kate Winslet.
“Because I’m not a mother and I was linked to Jo so much,” she said. “Because like her I was scared I wouldn’t be a perfect mother — and I’m still scared of, I don’t know, if I want a baby or not one day.
It’s like this is my nightmare — and I was so scared to talk about this nightmare that I had.
“As Jo I was having the nightmare of having a baby. And I say, now having read the script, I feel less ashamed to talk about these fears that I have.”
In fact, the key scene in “Baby Ruby,” Merlant finds, is when Jo’s concerned mother-in-law tells her a secret she’s never revealed to anyone before: There were times when as a first-time mother she felt like she was ready to murder her baby.
Merlant calls “Ruby” writer-director Bess Wohl as being fearless by tackling this topic few ever acknowledge. “I like to take risks and also feel Bess is taking a risk with this movie, because she’s talking about something that we’re not used to seeing in a movie about parents’ ability.
“She’s presenting motherhood with the very finest moments and terrifying horror ones.”