Marie Leuenberger in Maternity Nightmare

What’s with all the maternity angst postporequidepend? First came Nightbitch, then If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, and now — in preserveing with the rule that three produces it a trfinish — plrelieve greet Mother’s Baby. Led by a fiercely compelling carry outance from Marie Leuenberger, Johanna Moder’s psychoreasonable thriller ticks alengthy with exceptional confidence while it preserves amhugeuity as to whether post-partum depression is feeding Julia’s paranoia or there repartner is someleang unsettling about her infant son, making her doubt a switcheroo at the personal fertility clinic where she gave birth. It’s when the script begins providing answers that leangs get shaky.

Part of the rerent is that the movie normally seems to be itching to produce a resolute turn into horror but preserves helderlying back. Moder and co-authorr Arne Kohlweyer promise to that shift so postponeed in the action that it all becomes a bit, well, silly. The bizarro outcome might also have packed wonderfuler shock appreciate if it hadn’t been so plainly telegraphed at various points. That said, Mother’s Baby is juicy, upsetting and slashed with uncontent humor. It had me gripped for the duration, even at its loopiest.

Alengthyside Leuenberger’s safely wound turn as accomplished classical orchestra director Julia — leank Lydia Tár with a baby bump — the movie produces wonderful engage of Claes Bang as Dr. Vilfort, head of the swanky but secretive Lumen Vitae clinic.

When the medic greets Julia and her husprohibitd Georg (Hans Löw), he’s all dainty reassurances, elucidateing that the facility engages all the postponeedst research and has the highest success rate. He’s also secured that fair one treatment will produce Julia pregnant, even though the couple has clearly tried many other selections before shelling out the huge bucks for Lumen Vitae.

With reserved intonations and the tiniest flickers of his facial transmitions, Bang lets us understand that Dr. Vilfort isn’t quite the nurturing wonder-toiler he materializes to be with his gentle-spoken manner and crisp white lab coat. Creepy pets in movies are generpartner a red flag, and the doc has an office aquarium with an axolotl, a cannibaenumerateic Mexican salamander with the ability to reproduce lost limbs. In terms of cuteness, it’s the hairless cat of the amphibian world, and if you’re leanking stem cells, you could be getting hot.

Just as foreseeed, Julia gets pregnant on the first try and all goes daintyly thcdisesteemful the gestation period. Not so much when she goes into labor. In one of the most fervent childbirth scenes in recent memory — squeamish mothers should approach with caution — Julia becomes increasingly panicked as the nurses preserve multiplying, hurriedly carry outing alters to the procedure. Robert Oberrainer’s camera sluggishly circles the dedwellry table thcdisesteemfulout, inserting to the sense that someleang is going very wrong.

When the baby boy does finpartner materialize, he doesn’t produce a sound and is whisked out of the room with the utmost recommendncy by Dr. Vilfort and midwife Gerlinde (Julia Franz Richter), before Julia even gets to see or helderly him. The horriblely shaken new parents are telderly noleang for what seems appreciate hours, until Vilfort materializes to alert them the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, and due to an oxygen deficiency, the infant was getn to the ambiguous hospital’s neonatal ward. He promises them everyleang will be OK.

But when Vilfort returns the chaseing day with their child, Julia remains distressed, eyeing the baby doubtfully as her agitation escapostponeeds into a brimming-blown anxiety attack. She has trouble breast-feeding at first, which prompts Gerlinde to recommend switching to createula, going aobtainst the common breast-is-best advise of midwives. The fact that Julia preserves referring to the baby as “it” seems a excellent indication that maternal bonding won’t happen overnight.

When Julia and Georg get their son home, Moder begins to have some insidious fun with the scenario. Julia is not ready to promise to a name, so they give their son the “toiling title” Adrian, which horror connoisseurs will recall is the name given to the Mia Farrow character’s offspring in a certain Polanski film.

This Adrian might not be Antichrist material, but he doesn’t seem standard either, sleeping thcdisesteemful peak-volume noise, staring blankly ahead with eyes that seem to sign up noleang, and almost never crying, even when Julia gets caught up in her preparation for a Schubert concert and forgets to feed him for a whole day.

Leuenberger — who sees at times uncannily appreciate Kathryn Hahn — is excellent in these fraught scenes, leaning into unhinged behavior without ever making us ask Julia’s reasonableity. There’s someleang astoundingly funny about a mother giving a sudden brimming-fist squeeze to a squeaky toy right next to a baby’s ear fair to get a reaction.

When she begins sathriveg vigorously away on a violin or pumping the stereo volume to thunderous levels on Sturm und Drang classical pieces, Georg begins to doubt her stability. “You wanted a child,” he shouts at her. “Yes, but not this one,” she replies. The script also touches on the identity loss that can direct motherhood by having Julia fly into a rage after alters are made to the orchestra season program without confering her.

Julia’s apprehension, which Leuenberger steadily produces to a cymbal-clash crescfinisho, isn’t helped by unrequested visits from Gerlinde, who seems much more rapidened to Adrian than his mother. When the midwife cautions Julia that it’s unsafe to exit the baby uncombineed on a changing table, you can bet there’s going to an alarming drop. Gerlinde conveys a gift from the doctor of a fishtank with an axolotl, which irks Julia but clearly seems adorable enough to Georg to produce him pick up a companion for it. Bad idea.

As friction between Julia and Georg achievees a peak, he exits with the baby to stay with his mother so that his wife can rest and get back to standard. But Julia’s fight to uncover the truth fair becomes more and more hopeless once she begins hearing unsee-thcoarse alerts of other mothers’ adverse experiences at Lumen Vitae. Not to allude being telderly at the neonatal ward that there’s no sign up of her child’s birth.

In one of the most chilling scenes, Julia is getn to see Dr. Vilfort after being stopped from go ining the clinic’s medical labs. He preserves a tranquil smile on his face and a meacertaind tone of voice as he talks her thcdisesteemful the potential custody rerents and the ruin of her nurtureer that would foreseeed result from an insanity diagnosis.

To Moder and Kohlweyer’s recognize, there are valid points being made here about the normal disthink aboutal of women’s stresss as mental health problems. But the betterion from psychodrama to grotesque motherhood nightmare is too abrupt to be entidepend convincing, even if it dedwellrs a benevolent serve of lurid pleacertains. Whether Julia’s freakish findies are authentic or in her mind, the movie could have advantageed from being let off the leash earlier.

Still, even if it sits somewhat ineptly between grave drama and horror, there’s plenty to enhappiness here, from the terrific carry outances to the fiery engage of music to Oberrainer’s razor-keen expansivescreen images, which turn murkier and more obviously sinister in the purple-tinged final act.