Mother’s heart: the reception of Mothers’ Instinct

The film we are telling you about today is the Hollywood remake of a European film.
A remake that arrives six years after the original.
It’s almost strange to read it at a time like this, isn’t it?

Oh, come on, six years for a remake is a long time nowadays, eh.
I remind you that the American version that no one asked for will be released in September Speak No Evilwhich was just two years ago, we also told you about it on Twitch.

Today in Hollywood there is more pedaling on that front than ever, guys. As soon as they discover these absurd things that are European films, films spoken in a language that is not English – but think about it, how absurd? – the race starts immediately to see who will be the first to grab the right to say: nice, but do you mean if we did it, with our actors, our international language and our widespread distribution, how did it happen?

And if it’s not embarrassing, a time gap of only two years between the original and the remake means that in their ideal world it would be wonderful to be able to shorten the time even further. Like when the trailer for a Czechoslovakian film comes out with German subtitles and the next day they get to work, having understood the plot in broad terms (and after all seeing what certain films essentially become when Hollywood gives its version, there wouldn’t be much difference).

So, we were saying, six years. Crazy, six years from now Double suspicion and this Mothers’ Instinct.

Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway six years earlier

It was me together with the good Luotto who talked to you about this film a month ago on Twitch. Initially it was supposed to be directed by Olivier Masset-Depasse, the same director of the Franco-Belgian original, but then the project passed to Benoît Delhomme, a French director of photography awarded various prestigious awards (among which, however, I don’t see a single Sylvester so keep calm, or rather, remains calm) here in his debut as a director (and obviously of Mothers’ Instinct he also took care of the photography).
Jessica Chastain, on the other hand, in the story of the origins of the project carves out the role of the great star it saw Double suspicion, fell in love with it, and after talking about it for hours on the phone with her friend Anne Hathaway, to yet another «No, honey, you absolutely have to see it!» from the other side there must have come a «Sorry, but why don’t we produce a remake with us as protagonists?», immediately discarding the idea of a film club at home with friends, which in this imaginary dialogue I’m inventing I like to think of someone tried to propose.

Now, the fact that Chastain and Hathaway are protagonists and producers of the film is not simply an aspect to take into account, but is precisely the determining factor for the very existence of this remake as a product distributed in theaters. Without two such big names to act as a reminder, Mothers’ Instinct it would still exist, of course, but we would most likely see it on the platforms and perhaps it would be a Ryan Murphy-style stand-alone miniseries. The very presence of these two great actresses and Hollywood personalities means that a story as intimate and with such a retro feel as that of Mothers’ Instinct can have a treatment that is now practically a luxury and is in fact the very demonstration of what divas Chastain and Hathaway are, in case we hadn’t noticed.

«Hey man, in six months I’ll be Ferilli! Understood?”

And their stardom Mothers’ Instinct it’s obviously stuffed into every frame. To say that the film is supported solely by the performances of Chastain and Hathaway is an understatement, let’s also say that this very soft thriller would have very little to say were it not for the large doses of melodrama brought to the stage with great skill by the two. The moment Veerle Baetens and Anne Coesens by Double suspicion they are replaced by Chastain and Hathaway, although the plot is identical (taken from the novel Over the hedge by Barbara Abel) and the matrix of a very cold and Hitchcockian psychological thriller is not undermined, this version gives more space to the great spectacle of the tragedy played out at home, of the confidences that the two women make to each other, two women in the America of the Sixties with their feelings of guilt, their dismay, their anger. Chastain and Hathaway smoke nervously like the great divas of the past while using the porch as a confessional and a place of reflection on the role of women (of the time but also of the present day). And Delhomme frames every one of their facial muscles very well, always stopping one step before the great test leads to empty narcissism.

Ladies and gentlemen: melodrama

Also because, it must be said, for being the story of a mother (Chastain) who slips into a vortex of suspicion and paranoia about her best friend (Hathaway) after the latter has lost her son, this bourgeois nightmare of possible or imagined threats on the other side of the home garden does not present any particular “solos”. Chastain and Hathaway don’t give us key scenes, the moment or moments for which we will remember the film, in which they both forcefully step on the accelerator. Everything is always very calculated, surgical I dare say, and I admit this is what disappointed me most about the final showdown, where it would have been a little more useful to say “AND NOW LET’S MAKE A MESS!”, instead of closing the matter in such a hasty and fast.

Sorry, I just said that this is the story of a mother but I would like to correct myself, I said it to simplify the plot better. In reality this is the story of two instincts that have to do with being a mother: one embodied by Chastain and the other by Hathaway. The title is not Mother’s Instinctwhich we could translate into maternal instinctbut Mothers’ InstinctMeaning what the instinct of motherswhat a woman is willing to do to continue being a mother.

And okay, maybe we’re not looking at a very football film, but this thriller with great melody moments manages to keep us there rooting for a mother who doesn’t want to give in to the evidence that perhaps she imagined everything, that perhaps all this is just his instinct protective who suggests crazy things to her… or maybe the time has come to find out who her best friend really is.
And ultimately the answer is very simple: another mother capable of anything.

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