(Note: republished to fix some issues with the audio file. Apologies if you were affected by this.)
In this episode we review "Mother's Instinct", a Hitchcockian psychological drama starring Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway.
The reviewers are:
- Bob Mann of One Mann's Movies (https://www.onemannsmovies.com) and BBC Radio Solent &
- Rev. Andy Godfrey of Konnect Radio (https://www.konnectradio.com) and Sorted Magazine (https://sortedmag.com).
For the video version, look on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/tZGMfjOGxto .
Music: Hip Jazz by Bensound.
Any clips used are taken from YouTube trailers or posted clips. Copyright remains with the original owners. As this podcast involves review, criticism and observation on the copyrighted materials, the clips are used under a ‘Fair Use’ policy. If copyright owners object to such use, please email bobthemovieman1@gmail.com and they will be removed.
Bob Mann (00:07)
Hello and welcome to this episode of Flickering Dreams. It's episode 66 and we are going to start by looking at a new film out in cinemas at the moment called Mother's Instinct. This is actually another example of a French film that has been Hollywoodized. 2018's Duelles, but for once this is one the Americans seem to have got right. It's 1960.
and Celine played by Anne Hathaway is and Alice played by Jessica Chastain are neighbours who are also the best of friends. Their sons Max and Theo are also inseparable but when disaster strikes and one of the boys is killed a chasm of guilt and recrimination opens up between the two women. Here's a clip.
Well, now I've heard it say that film reviewers who call things Hitchcockian are tagged as being lazy in jumping to that tag. But I have to say this did have a significantly Hitchcockian vibes to me, right down to Jessica Chastain being one of Hitchcock's kind of ice maiden women in the film. Sophisticated.
psychological thrillers don't come along very often. And this one was very much welcomed by me. It's really good in a film like this, where you really don't quite know what's going on until you are well into the second reel and which way it's going to go. And there will be no spoilers on this show, but the finale of this film is really something else and quite surprising. It's quite unusual in a film to...
hear a gasp from the audience at a particular point in the plot. And that happened at the showing that I was at a collective gasp. Clearly, Chastain and Hathaway are Oscar nominated Oscar winning, in fact, actresses, and they certainly don't disappoint that look of terror on Hathaway's face when she suddenly realizes what's happened to her son was absolutely breathtakingly good, in my view.
Are these Oscar nomination worthy? Don't know the year is yet young, but I thought Hathaway was particularly good in this. Two child actors are also very good. They are Eamon Patrick O 'Connell as Theo, and he gets to do most of the heavy lifting because Max doesn't last for very long in this film. Okay. And isn't it nice that...
a film comes in at under 94 minutes, which is a real treat. Negatives for me, I didn't really have any other than the general sense that the ending will not be to everybody's taste, I think. And there was one particular moment in the film where one of the characters makes a leap of judgment relating to an empty bottle. And we'll leave it at that.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (03:45)
Yeah, I absolutely love this. I mean, the other connection with Hitchcock is that it's about mothers. And if you look at Hitchcock's films, you've obviously got Mrs. Bates, you've got a very strong mother character in Strangers on the Train, you've got another character in North by Northwest, mother characters that predominate Hitchcock films. And I just thought this was absolutely terrific. I mean, 10 out of 10 for the fashion. I mean, we're in the 60s, the dresses are sensational, the setting is sensational. I thought that the production values were really...
Bob Mann (03:54)
but I thought that was putting two and two together and making like 392. It was a bit of a leap of imagination. Andy, I know you're a big Hitchcock fan. What did you make of it?
Rev. Andy Godfrey (04:13)
Really, I believe, you know, we were in the suburbs of whatever American town it was, two fairly well -off families coping with the tragedy. Nice and twisty, nice and turny. I didn't see the end coming. I thought it was going to play out in a very different way. There's one moment where they actually lead you down a false path where somebody's lying on a sofa and you think, hang on a minute, this is going to be okay. And then bang, everything changes right in front of your eyes.
So I absolutely loved it. It's one of my favourite films of the year so far. It was my film of the month for March. And I thought that the twisty turning nature of the plot, the way it was directed, the way it was acted, the acting performances are absolutely superb. The two kids are great. There's one scene in particular in a funeral service where the little boy absolutely excels himself. And that kind of was a scene that is very disturbing in its own way.
Let alone anything else in the film, probably the most disturbing scene in the film. So I absolutely loved this. I thought it was terrific. And again, as I said with The Trouble with Jessica, which is coming out this week, another one of which I think Hitchcock would have been proud. And I could see him looking at this book because it started life as a book and picking it up, reading it and thinking, yeah, I'd love to direct this. So I absolutely loved it. Absolutely loved it.
Bob Mann (05:23)
Yes.
very disturbing.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (05:39)
I've been trying to find it and failing miserably. I've been trying to find it online.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's called Duelles, isn't it? The original Duelles. But I can't find it anywhere online at the moment. So hopefully it becomes available. Yeah.
Bob Mann (05:52)
Good, good, good. Yeah, it actually makes me want to watch the French film now if I can find a copy of that. OK, OK, yeah. Looking at the trailer, it looks as if whole sections of this film have been kind of lifted and shifted directly, directly translated. Duelles, D -U -E -L -L -E -S, yeah. OK, OK.
Rev. Andy Godfrey (06:07)
Oh, it's a nine for me.
Okay. Yeah.
Have you seen this Scott? Have you not seen this? No, okay. Just double checking.
Bob Mann (06:22)
Maybe somebody will bring it out. Scores on the doors
nine. I gave it an eight but still good enough. A flickering dream score of eight and a half.
Oh, OK. I didn't think he had because he was on mute. So that's a flickering dreams score of eight and a half for Mother's Instinct, making that a big hit with us. Right, I'm going to stop recording. Oh, no, hang on a second. Thanks for watching flickering dreams. As always, please subscribe, like and tell your friends about it.
And if you've got any comments, please email me. What am I? Bobthemovieman1 at gmail .com. That's bobthemovieman1 at gmail .com if you've got any thoughts on that film. OK, thanks for watching. Cheers.