Mothers’ Instinct: Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain can’t save this duff suburban psychodrama

Susan Sontag famously defined camp as “a seriousness that fails”. Where does that leave failed camp? Exhibit A: the duffness of Mothers’ Instinct, which pairs Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as 1960s neighbours feuding after a tragedy we can neither take seriously nor relish in the least.

It would be cruel to the film to spoil said tragedy outright. Prepare for an accident involving a day off school, a balcony, a bird feeder, and Chastain’s Alice aborting a crawl through a hedge that might have saved someone’s life. She’s left distraught; far more so the grieving Céline (Hathaway), who may or may not blame her for more or less all of it.

Remaking a 2018 Belgian film of the same name, cinematographer-turned-director Benoît Delhomme can’t find his way into this loopy material, merely luring his stars through their soignée wardrobe fittings into a series of stale dead ends. The whole film is stumped and glum, not to mention visually unappetising beyond the frocks – Delhomme, who also shot it, couldn’t very well fire himself.

The aim is clearly to put us in mind of 1990s psychothrillers – something like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (1992), or perhaps even the laughable trash-pile Hush (1998), which had Jessica Lange as Gwyneth Paltrow’s ravenously wicked mother-in-law. Delhomme’s film could have been good fun like the former of those, or bad fun like the latter, and should have gone one way or the other. 

It’s neither. For a good hour, Alice’s suspicions of all Céline’s payback schemes may (or may not) be completely in her head. Chastain has to fumble any sense of conviction (her strongest suit, usually) to play this role dumbly paranoid. Her bullying husband (Anders Danielsen Lie) reminds her she’s been institutionalised before and might easily be sent back. Meanwhile, Josh Charles acquits himself decently as Céline’s husband, despite having little to do but drown in sorrow.