Embed from Getty Images
Amy Adams was at TIFF over the weekend premiering her new film, Nightbitch, based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Rachel Yoder. Nightbitch follows Amy’s protagonist, simply called “Mother,” a stay-at-home mom who begins to think she’s turning into a dog. It’s a rom-com! No, I jest. But with a pretty bonkers premise, a central theme about “the feral power deeply rooted in motherhood,” and a woman writer/director (Marielle Heller of Can You Ever Forgive Me?), all I can say is dog bless everyone who put up the money to get this film made! Of course Amy is a consummate thespian, so if the assignment is “become a dog,” you better believe she will become a dog. She was so good, in fact, that in a scene she shared with a dozen canine costars, she freaked them the f–k out with her spot-on head tilt. That’s right, bitches, it’s called acting!
The premise is wild: “Motherhood is (expletive) brutal,” Amy Adams’ character says in her new movie, “Nightbitch,” and she learns just how primal it can be when her life literally goes to the dogs. Based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 book, the darkly humorous drama (in theaters Dec. 6) features Adams as a woman who gave up her art gallery career to stay at home with her young son. She believes she’s turning into a dog when canine qualities start popping up on her body — including fur on her back, extra nipples and what seems to be a tail — and finds she’s able to voice her internal anger and repression in a new way.
Even the author can’t believe her book was adapted: “I just so deeply connected to the narrative that Rachel created. It was so unique and so singular and just something I never read before,” she [Adams] said. Yoder was also on hand and teared up a few times when discussing seeing her story on the big screen. “I thought I wrote a really weird book that no one would read, frankly,” she said. “So, yeah, it was really surprising then when this is what happened.”
How director Marielle Heller approached the material: In general, “we’re not very comfortable talking about female rage,” Heller added. “It’s not something that we tend to share with each other or talk about, and that we’re sort of afraid of women at this phase of our lives. So it felt really good to kind of take this invisible experience that a lot of us have gone through and make it more visible.” The director began working on adapting “Nightbitch” while “really postpartum” after having her second child, who was born in 2020. She was home while her husband, comedian/filmmaker Jorma Taccone, was off making a TV show, “so I was totally alone with two kids for the first time and just writing this during the naps. It was very cathartic. My husband was terrified when he read it.”
The canine actors had opinions: Marielle reported that they used 12 real dogs on the set “with 12 trainers all hiding in bushes.” In one scene, Adams’ increasingly canine mom walks down steps and is swarmed by the dogs in her front lawn. They got it down in rehearsals, but when the time came for Adams to film with them, she made a head tilt while in character that didn’t go over well. “The dogs freaked out and started lunging at her. It was like her behavior was too odd and it flipped them. It was wild,” Heller recalled. “One dog was like, ‘That’s not OK, that’s not cool,’” Adams said. “No matter what I did, he didn’t trust me after that.”
Oh that poor floof who felt betrayed by Amy! “My trainer told me we were gonna have fun — not be made fun of!” But why would a pack of dogs pounce upon seeing a person tilt her head?! I know I tilted my head a few times to my dearly-departed pup My Girl, usually to mirror when she was doing the move herself. And I don’t ever recall her having a strong reaction to my exhibiting that behavior. But then again, I’m not a six-time Oscar nominated actress like Amy Adams… And speaking of, this looks to me like another career best performance from her. Will she earn a seventh nom for Nightbitch? Could the Academy even fathom nominating a film called “Nightbitch?” Yes, the title is strong, and yeah the premise is out there; but when you watch the trailer it looks really funny too! We’re digging into primal, lofty themes like parenthood and female rage, but we also get knockout lines like, “I can crack a walnut with my vagina.” You had me at walnut-cracking-vagina. Count this bitch in.
I am so ready for this – I am completely in the mood for a film about female rage.
I saw the trailer for this this weekend. I really want to see it!
I can’t wait for this movie!! It is exactly my type of weird. I don’t want to read the book first, because I have never liked the movie if I read the book first. I think, Amy said she doesn’t select her movies based on awards, she is having fun with different projects. With or without the awards, she has always been a great actress. My fav movie is Doubt with her and Meryl Streep.
Nightbitch sounds so much like a movie from 2017; Bitch is a dark comedy film. I wonder what the differences are going to be. Bitch was good, it was shocking and some scenes hard to watch but i think the actors did a great job, I think is still in tubi if anyone wants to see it.