Mothers’ Instinct: A Review

Benoît Delhomme’s remake of French film Duelles (2018), an adaptation of Barbara Abdel’s novel, Derriere La Haine (2012) shines!

Set to be released in the UK on March 27th, it stars Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain as Celine and Alice. It is the 1960s, the women are married, best friends and next door neighbours. Each woman has an eight year old son and their sons like them are best friends. The film’s first half looks at the anxieties of the women with relation to the era they like. For example Alice (Chastain) would like to return to work where her husband would rather she stay home and have a second child.

The women have an incredible bond and are seen supporting each other and celebrating life events such as birthdays.

Their perfect suburban existence is shattered like a mirror when Celine’s son falls from their family home to his death. She blames Alice who saw him on the edge of the balcony of his family home but does not get to him on time.

Celine’s blame leads to guilt then paranoia on Alice’s part, she starts to suspect that Celine wants to harm her family in retribution but she struggles to get her husband to see what she has been piecing together. These incidents range from Alice’s Mother-in-law having a deadly heart attack which Alice cannot wrap her head around as her Mother-in-law had been dutifully taking her heart medications. Alice suspects that Celine swapped the meds with a placebo tablet so she secretly carries out an autopsy. It reveals what she suspected that her Mother-in-law system had not had the heart medication despite her routinely being seen to take her medication. A second incident happens quickly and it entails Alice’s son having an almost deadly reaction to peanut cookies whilst at Celine’s house during a family dinner. Celine had been aware of the boy’s deadly allergy to peanuts.

Delhomme’s brilliance is in that the thriller does not reveal to us till the end whether Alice’s suspicions concerning her once friend is right or not.

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Delhomme’s Mothers’ Instinct is flawless and so is the acting by Hathaway and Chastain. The 60’s costume is stunning, a visual masterpiece by Mitchell Travers.

Delhomme’s ‘Mothers’ Instinct’ is out in cinemas in the UK on 27th March.