Mothers’ Instinct, Benoît Delhomme’s directorial debut, is a remake of French-spoken 2018 film Duelles. Duelles, which was based on the novel “Derrière la haine” by Barbara Abel, was relatively acclaimed. The film received 10 nominations at the Magritte Awards in Belgium, winning nine, but has now been remade and repackaged for English-language speaking audiences.
Remakes, especially ones made in the English language rather than the original tongue, are a contentious topic. Executive producer John Zois of Anton, a production company involved with both films, reductively said “Hitchockian-style suspense thrillers are still getting made in a high-end way for European audiences but they don’t often get made for an American audience”. It feels like a distinct lack of trust in audiences. This lack of trust is something that Delhomme struggles with in Mothers’ Instinct, a film that can’t quite work out if it wants to be camp melodrama or a paranoid thriller made for second-screen audiences and ends up situated somewhere stuck between the two.
This review was first posted on March 26th 2024. Full review linked below.
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