This 60s suburbia-set psychological thriller from French director Benoît Delhomme drops Hitchcock references at the same rate that housewives Celine (Anne Hathaway) and Alice (Jessica Chastain) serve each other passive-aggressive trays of perfectly manicured canapés (pretty much every other scene). From the highly strung Bernard Herrmann-alike score to the coiffed spiral of Alice’s platinum blond hair, to the fact that the film opens with a curtain-twitching character spying through a rear window, Mothers’ Instinct (a remake of the 2018 Belgian film Duelle) goes beyond Hitch-homage and veers into parody. But the film’s fawning admiration for the work of the Master of Suspense only serves to highlight how heavy-handed the plotting is by comparison.
It’s a pity that the screenplay stumbles, because Chastain and, in particular, Hathaway take to the melodramatic register of the piece like olives to an ice-cold martini. They play next-door neighbours and besties whose close friendship is knocked off kilter after a freak accident results in a tragic death. A film about two immaculately groomed women gaslighting and goading each other to the point of madness should be a lot more fun than this.
