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The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival showcased two highly anticipated films: Marielle Heller’s honest exploration of motherhood in Nightbitch and Ron Howard’s survival thriller Eden, set in the Galapagos Islands.
The curtain rose on two major productions at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Saturday. Nightbitch, a candid portrayal of the joys and struggles of motherhood, and Eden, a true story of Europeans seeking a new life in the Galapagos after World War I, both garnered significant interest from audiences and critics alike.
Directed by Marielle Heller and based on Rachel Yoder’s 2021 novel, Nightbitch stars Amy Adams as Mother, an artist turned stay-at-home mom who is exhausted from caring for a rambunctious toddler while her husband frequently travels for work. Isolated and overwhelmed, Mother begins to hear things in the night and notices unusual hair growth. Is she transforming into an actual dog?
Nightbitch explores the many facets of motherhood – the wonder and joy, but also the darkness and exhaustion – with equal doses of comedy, drama and magical realism. The film is sure to resonate with millions of women who have had to make difficult choices regarding parenting, career and marriage, and who have sometimes found themselves disappointed.
“We’re not very comfortable talking about female rage,” said Heller during a Q&A session after the screening. “It felt good to make this invisible experience that so many of us have had visible.”
Amy Adams, 50, a six-time Oscar nominee, fully embodies her role and could well be part of the award conversations next year thanks to her grounded, uninhibited performance. She fearlessly delivers inner monologues about the frustrations and mind-numbing monotony of motherhood, lashes out at other children’s screams during library story time, and paws at the ground during one of her nighttime outings.
In a different vein, the world premiere of Oscar-winning director Ron Howard’s Eden also took place on Saturday in Toronto. The survival thriller, featuring Jude Law and Sydney Sweeney, is based on the true story of a small group of Europeans seeking a new life in the Galapagos Islands, away from the horrors and constraints of society.
Law portrays Friedrich Ritter, who escapes to Floreana Island with his partner Dora (Vanessa Kirby) to enjoy solitude and write a manifesto. However, his letters, picked up by local boats, are published on the mainland, and others follow suit, settling on the island.
A young German couple (Sweeney and Daniel Brühl) arrives, followed by the Baroness Eloise (Ana de Armas) and her entourage, who dream of building a luxury hotel. Although weather conditions and terrain prove challenging, the biggest hurdles come from within the community itself.
“This is what these people experienced, and I found it fascinating, utterly human, and surprisingly close to human existence today and all its flaws, its quirks,” Howard said during a Q&A session after the premiere.
Sweeney emphasized that it was “every actor’s dream” to work with the 70-year-old filmmaker, who won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for A Beautiful Mind in 2001. Law, for his part, was delighted to have had the opportunity to work with an ensemble cast, noting that “it doesn’t happen often.”
While vastly different in subject matter and tone, Nightbitch and Eden share a common thread of pushing the boundaries of their respective genres. One by delving into the shadows of motherhood, the other by exploring the fragility of utopian dreams. Two ambitious works that have already left their unique mark on the 2024 Toronto Film Festival.
With AFP
