文/耷子
The core of the story of the movie " Mother's Instinct " is actually more inclined to its original English name - "mothers' instinct". In this dark and turbulent film, director Benoit Dem tears apart the other side of maternal love. It is no longer a mother's gentle embrace and selfless devotion, but a heart-pounding intensity... Paranoid.
In the American suburbs of the 1960s, two families wrapped in a perfect appearance appeared before our eyes. Celine and Alice are neighbors and best friends who talk about everything. As typical middle-class housewives, their lives are filled with all kinds of elegance and splendor. However, all this is soon torn apart by a sudden tragedy: Celine's son Max accidentally falls from the balcony of his home and dies. This incident not only took away a young life, but also destroyed the originally unbreakable friendship between the two mothers.
From the eyes of the two mothers who no longer trust each other, we can completely predict that the tragedy is far from over. Surrounded by sensitivity and vulnerability, Alice seems to be dominated by imagination: in her view, Celine is carrying out an imperceptible attack on her family, and she has no idea how to deal with this ensuing hostility.
Soon, the film stirred up a Hitchcockian vortex of suspense. The director used seemingly calm camera language to outline the chain reaction of the two mothers' collapse.
In the battle between women, the most powerful weapon is often not the appearance, but the heart. "Mother's Intuition" attempts to delve into the most subtle psychological picture of women, integrating trust, betrayal, jealousy, suspicion, and even unfounded malice into this endless war. More importantly, although the two characters of husbands who are symbolized in the film are not much mentioned, they reflect the social appearance of the United States in the 1960s. The so-called mother's "instinct" actually comes from the patriarchal society's way of treating women. Invisible suppression - until Celine reveals her true motives, she is still bound to the role of "mother" and cannot extricate herself.
From a genre perspective, "Mother's Intuition" is based on a suspense film and carefully constructs a slightly exaggerated popular story, but the ending setting is still questionable. At first, we were fully expecting a highlight ending like "The Surprise", a mystery that fits the psychological logic of the characters. However, due to the film's lack of rigorous plot layout, the ending that was already full of loopholes only achieved The effect is chilling and lacks the depth and conviction it deserves.
Although the story density of the film is only enough to fill a short story, thanks to the wonderful performances of two famous actresses, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, the viewing quality of the film has been improved to a certain extent. . Both performances reached a consistently high level, full of passion and charm.
Hathaway accurately captured Celine's psychological changes from shock and anger to complete loss of control. The powerful energy contained in her calmness was not released until the last moment, but the pain and madness hidden in this character were clearly visible.
Chastain's performance shows Alice's various struggles in the face of Celine's accusations and family pressure. Her guilt, panic and hesitation about self-worth constitute the character's inner conflict and bring about a more Rich emotional levels.
The chemical reaction between the performances of the two heroines adds tension to the whole film, but the weak script still reduces the impact, especially the final direction of the character Alice, which is incredibly sloppy. With such hasty, even comical plotting, it's easy to leave the impression that "Mother's Intuition" is merely telling the outline of a story.
However, we cannot stop the director's surging creative ambition: the film's photography style seems to have the texture of a Todd Haynes movie, and the costumes and art design are even more breathtaking, with exquisite props arranged in every scene, showing Detailed texture.Unfortunately, in addition to script problems, the film technically fails to make full use of editing techniques to enhance dramatic conflicts, and key emotional turning points are handled too blandly, wasting the dazzling acting team.
Overall, "Mother's Intuition" is a soap opera disguised as a thriller, exquisite and gorgeous but unable to hide its monotony.
