Mother’s Baby (Austria, Germany and Switzerland, 2025)
Original title: Mother’s Baby
Director: Johanna Moder
Screenplay: Arne Kohlweyer and Johanna Moder
Main cast: Marie Leuenberger, Hans Löw, Claes Bang, Julia Franz Richter, Laura Meakin, Nina Fog and Caroline Frank
Running time: 108 minutes
As mentioned in previous reviews, motherhood is a subject that never goes out of style on the big screen. Mother’s Baby is yet another iteration of this same theme, using suspense as a way to deal with the situation of a woman who cannot connect with her child.
Julia (Marie Leuenberger) is this woman who really wants to have a child and who goes to a fertility clinic with her husband, Georg (Hans Löw), with this intention. They are soon received by Dr. Vilfort (Claes Bang), who assures them that it’s one of the best clinics in Europe and that they will soon have their baby. Sure enough, we soon see her pregnant, following the complicated birth, her sadness when she sees her son being taken to the ICU, and her joy when he returns home. However, something was lost in this process, and Julia’s unable to create a connection with this child.
The film follows the path of tension very well as we follow the drama of this mother trying to understand what’s wrong with her or with the child. We have a great metaphor for postpartum depression with this disconnection, the growing climate of paranoia and the relationship with the people around her, who believe that Julia’s really going crazy. Since it’s a work of fiction, we aren’t sure if what we see is a projection of the woman or if it’s something real: the strangeness of the boy, the suspicious looks of the people at the clinic, and the intrusion of the doctor seeming unusual, but still possible within the context of this woman who believes she’s being persecuted.
Much of this strangeness is built within the audiovisual characteristics. From the first scenes, we see a lot of contrast between Julia and Georg and the fertility clinic, with them always contrasting with the colors of the place. At the same time, the construction of the house where they spend most of the film is beautiful, with all the details planned for the arrival of the baby and, when he arrives, not being able to really adapt to that place. The soundtrack, which is very important in this situation due to Julia’s work as a conductor, also helps to create an atmosphere between mystery and melancholy. Finally, there’s some exquisite sound work, especially in the birth scene. The way the baby’s heartbeat is shown always seems a little out of sync, and from then on we’re already caught up in the proposed atmosphere.
Although maintaining suspense is a great way to keep the tension and metaphor of the film, there’s a moment in which one can choose between maintaining the atmosphere of mystery or going for the proposed idea of terror, and unfortunately all the tension of the work ends up giving way to a new concept that doesn’t have enough time to develop on screen. Far from invalidating the rest of the experience, this ending only slightly diminishes the more symbolic power of the movie.
As another in a series of films that address motherhood in a bold way and that play with the supernatural to talk about serious subjects, it’s another important work within this unorganized movement of female directors. And, a tip for those who are going through an in vitro fertilization process: it’s better to stay away from the work so as not to create new paranoia in an already complex process.
Translation by: Renata Torres
