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‘Mothers’ Instinct’ Review: Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain Primly Do Battle in a Loopy Suburban Psychodrama
Starring Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain, Benoît Delhomme's 'Mothers' Instinct' nestles blood-red horror in pastel-perfect domestic melodrama.
Delhomme was a late replacement for director Olivier Masset-Depasse, who certainly did have a handle on the material: He wrote and directed the far superior 2018 Belgian thriller of the same title (or “Duelles” in its native French) from which “Mothers’ Instinct” has been closely adapted by writer Sarah Conradt. The differences between Céline (Hathaway) and Alice (Chastain) first emerge subtly in their parenting of their respective young sons Max (Baylen D. Bielitz) and Theo (Eamon Patrick O’Connell) — both only children, and both the same age, prompting a friendship that mirrors that of their mothers. Conradt’s screenplay plays a lengthy second-act game of who’s-gaslighting-who, pitting one character’s rising paranoia against the other’s overstepping, and then swapping those positions for good measure, resolutely refusing to take sides until the story vaults itself to a new plane of absurdity.
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