Mother’s Instinct

In cinemas now

There is a point during Benoît Delhomme’s psychological thriller, a remake of Olivier Masset-Depasse's original feature, where you wonder whether you might be watching something far less conventional than what Mother’s Instinct ends up being. The film, which is based on a 2012 novel written by Barbara Abel, is focused on two suburban housewives (played by Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain) whose friendship begins to unravel in the wake of a tragedy involving one of their children.

At the film’s midpoint, Chastain’s character becomes convinced that her friend has hatched a seemingly improbable scheme to punish her for failing to prevent this catastrophe, despite there being scant evidence to support her claims. This briefly raises an interesting question about the effects of grief on those who bear witness to it, even if they are not bereaved themselves, as well as the inherent anxieties of motherhood.

However, Delhomme’s film quickly disposes of such introspection in favour of a more familiar final act whereby its two leading ladies find themselves on a fatal collision course. While Anne Nikitin’s nail biting score and a typically committed performance from Chastain ensure this makes for a somewhat gripping denouement, it does render Mother’s Instinct a more perfunctory affair than it could have otherwise been.