That's the tagline of Marielle Heller's new film, in which Amy Adams plays the titular Nightbitch. This serious theme is not new in film or literature, so much so that in the Rachel Yoder novel that Heller adapted for her light-hearted screenplay, the concept is assailed with a fantastical allegory in which women transform into dogs. In the film, Heller and Adams acknowledge the source material, but don't fully trust its contents; rather, they drop it midway, resulting in a film that's more boring than a dog movie. Watch this movie on Flixtor movies.
The main character is "Mom." She has no name. Neither does her adorable two-year-old son, "Baby," or her distant, mostly absent husband, "Father." She has no name, because she could be you or she could be me. The point is, it can and does happen to anyone. But she has no face. The excessively puffy eyes, the anchor-like crow's feet, the dark circles under the eyes, the sunburn exacerbated by lack of sleep are familiar to any mother who has cared for children.
Heller ensures that not only is the mother's physique hopelessly, hopelessly emaciated, but her life is also banal and monotonous. A well-edited early scene shows their morning on a loop, with a stick of butter fitting into a hot frying pan, a little boy throwing a tantrum at breakfast, and the mother staring blankly out the window. She goes to the local library for a "baby book" class, but is disgusted by the fake squeals and squeals of the other mothers. In one of the film's many funny opening sequences, in which the mother loses her temper in a supermarket and gives bizarre answers to mundane questions, Heller makes generous and effective use of the tried-and-true movie trick of "imagine if I had done that instead."
To make matters worse, as we later learn, the mother has also suffered a bone-crunching injustice. She gave up her dream of being an artist to be a stay-at-home mom. A creative, courageous, quirky and energetic woman, she dies while giving birth to a child and is later portrayed as a woman consumed with grief. Adams navigates all these stages with her usual brilliance, her signature moving, subtle but compelling performance. The family history may sound familiar but you'll be enthralled in no time.
And so emerges the final fascinating element of this promising story. Mommy wonders if she's turned into a dog. "Mummy's got fur," the baby says, noticing that she has hair growing on her hips. Her teeth get sharper and she develops a strange taste for raw red meat. Then a strange cyst forms which, when burst, reveals Mommy's growing cock, which, rather than frightening her, makes Mommy feel strangely alive, like a woman of the night.