Lord knows I love a 50’s physiological thriller and lord knows I love Anne Hathaway, which is why I was excited for Mother’s Instinct and why in turn why I was so excited only a few months since for Eileen. Now both films in their own ways disappointed me, but what frustrated me most is the simple fact that each of them could have so easily completed one another. I’ve just never had a case in recent memory where my two major issues with two separate films could have been solved by the other - Mother’s Instinct needed the directing and writing behind Eilleen and Eileen needed to have the sort of triumphantly dark and effective ending that Mother’s Instinct has. But let’s give Instinct its own time first.

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All of the ingredients are there for Mother’s Instinct to be my favourite film of the year. Anybody who knows me will know this immediately just from hearing the logline, however I was incredibly disappointed with this film adapted from a novel by Barbara Abel which is adapted here by Sarah Conrad and directed by Benoit Delhomme, and apparently already made first into a successful French film. Placing Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, and the always underrated Josh Charles into an American remake of a successful French thriller and setting it in 50s picket fence America sounds perfect to me, however something is just always a miss with the film. It seems that only Hathaway is on the right track of what this film could have been, its not even that Chastain is bad because she’s not, she’s hampered by the screenplay in a way that Hathaway is not. Chastain and her husband played by Anders Danielsen Lie both are put on such a wacky and loose trajectory for their characters that we begin to loose at grasp on what the flow of the film is meant to be at all. There is no flow, there is very little pace and events begin to unfold at a rhythm that reflects something without rhythm at all. My biggest issue is that there is just simply no leaning into the strengths the film has or at least could have. Its all surface level with Hathaway and Chastain doing their best time and time again to lift the material. The twist of the film although unsuspectedly dark and enthralling in that regard, comes out of nowhere due to the improper direction of the film and so comes off as lame and almost random feeling. The darkness and the lacking of punches pulled with the ending is certainly refreshing but it is by no means refreshing enough to override the overall lack of propulsion into it that we receive. This is a poorly directed and largely poorly written film with a series of great actors attempting and for the most part succeeding in giving solid to great work - which for my money ends up as the definition of middle of the road.

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A 5/10 that again has just so much thwarted promise. A darker than expected ending although coming out of nowhere and poorly seeded does manage to make this film interesting to some extent, but the lack of progression into this ending and the aimless and uneven progression of the films overall arc into terror does it no favours at all. This is a film as advertised that is purely for the two lead performances of Chastain and Hathaway, however the film falls between two stools never finding a footing. Its never the high quality prestige thriller it sets out to be and to be frank its never darkly campy or joyous enough to enjoy as the sort of battle of fierce women that some have led it to look like.

P.S. On the other hand keep giving me sub par period psychological thrillers one or two a year forever if you wish to, for I adore Patricia Highsmith and the majority of those works of hers end somewhat unsatisfactorily, so I’m a hypocrite to negate the effect of the journey prior. Unfortunately as aforementioned the journey prior with Mother’s Instinct was not the worthy one that Eileen was. Would I even be comparing them as much as I am, if it were not for the Hathaway of it all? I still think so.

-        Thomas Carruthers