Nightbitch review - Mother's life as a dog

Rachel Yoder says she wrote her debut novel Nightbitch as a reaction to Donald Trump’s first term as President, with what she saw as its consequent mood-shift in America towards “traditional values and women staying home, taking care of the kids.”

It’s presumably safe to assume that the second coming of the Donald has not filled her with glee, but she can at least console herself that the combination of director Marielle Heller and star Amy Adams have delivered a sizzling screen version of her book.

Adams’s Mother – the key characters are called by their roles rather than their names – is a riot of conflicting emotions and rebellious hormones as she struggles to make the transition from being a free-thinking creative person, previously pursuing a promising career as an artist, to home-maker and diligent parent. There’s a superb scene where she encounters a female friend, who makes cooing noises at her and tells Mother how she must be loving being able to spend all her time with her child (aka Son). Mother gives two different answers, firstly a ferocious rant about how she’s trapped at home and is losing her mind and her identity, and then the “official” answer which is “yes, it’s wonderful”. Her torment as she joins the other mothers at Book Babies gatherings, Baby Yoga and Tyke Hike is minutely observed and painfully comical.

Meanwhile Husband (Scoot McNairy, pictured above) pursues his career as what the Japanese might call a salaryman, returning home to regale Mother with accounts of meetings or work colleagues. His blithe detachment from the realities of child-rearing, let alone the horrors of childbirth, virtually amounts to criminal negligence, and indeed he’s barely capable of making any contribution at all to the running of the household. When Mother is trying to enjoy a stress-relieving soak in the shower, Husband indignantly sticks his head round the bathroom door to demand why they’ve run out of milk. When she persuades him to give Son a bath, he can’t manage it without pestering her for assistance. He even finds making a pot of coffee a bit of a stretch.

Adams is usually associated with smart, svelte roles, but has boldly thrown caution to the winds here. She’s gone up about half a dozen dress sizes as she physically embodies the pandemonium that has erupted in her brain, and there’s a kind of gleeful abandon in scenes like the one where she gorges herself like Prehistoric Woman on meatloaf in a local diner, as fellow-customers look on in amazement.

It’s the mysteriously wise local librarian, Norma (Jessica Harper), who is the agent of a transformation in Mother’s perceptions when she finds a book called Field Guide to Magical Women. As she peruses passages on, for example, the tree women of the Amazon, she comes to a new appreciation of the primeval essence of womanhood and giving birth (“we are gods, we create life!” she enthuses to her toddler-raising friends). Memories of her dearly-loved mother, who never fulfilled her true potential, serve as a sort of lodestone and guiding light.

Mother’s life as a dog takes a little bit of getting used to, as she finds herself growing extra nipples and a tail (“I am a woman and I am an animal!” she declares), while cat-lovers will be outraged by the gratuitously callous treatment doled out to the family tabby. Scenes of Mother running through the gloaming with a pack of local hounds can only be described as whimsical, but it looks much more fun than the dinner she has with some of her college friends, Manhattanites now pursuing rarefied careers in art. Their pretensions and patronising self-absorption cry out for somebody to hose them down with freezing water, and you wonder why Mother would want to be one of them. But her tortuous journey carries her from birth to rebirth, and she emerges all the stronger for it.

• More film reviews on theartsdesk