Review
Culture
Film & TV
Identity
Weirdness
5 min read

Nightbitch’s metamorphosis of motherhood

In parenting the best things in life cost everything and nothing.

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

A woman runs down a street at night accompanied by dogs
Amy Adams, running with the dogs.
Searchlight Pictures.

With birth rates declining, family breakdown increasing and what has been called an anxiety epidemic amongst children, a film about the raw challenges of motherhood – aimed at men as much as women - has to make us sit up and take notice.  

Nightbitch does exactly that. Based on Rachel Yoder’s lockdown novel of the same name, it tells the story of a stay-at-home mum who, faced with the brutal realities of modern-day mothering, discovers her feral side – and transforms into a dog. 

The film stars Amy Adams, an exceptional actress known for her roles in Arrival—a Denis Villeneuve masterpiece about aliens arriving on Earth—and other iconic films like Man of Steel (as Lois Lane), Enchanted (where she plays the central character), and Night at the Museum (as Amelia Earhart).  In this film she delivers a powerful and deeply emotional performance as another alienated character, once a successful artist with a promising career, now reduced to part-parent, part-nightbitch.  

The plot has echoes of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, where travelling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes up one day to find himself transformed into a giant insect. While Samsa’s arthropod transformation signifies entrapment and helplessness, Amy’s canine alter-ego provides a contrasting sense of liberation, offering her an empowering path of fierce self-assertion amid the demands of motherhood that have become overwhelming and suffocating. Nevertheless, both magical realism narratives use animal transformation to explore profound feelings of loss of identity, isolation and inequality - themes that are especially relevant in a time when pressures on families are immense.   

Identity loss 

Introducing herself to a group of new mothers, Amy’s character, who remains nameless throughout, says, “I used to be an artist.” Her inability to articulate who she is reflects so much: her loss of purpose, loss of social identity, loss of external validation, loss of financial independence, loss of cognitive functions, loss of self-worth. But it is not only her transformation into a dog that depicts this. There’s a poignant moment as the film opens when Amy bumps into the woman who has taken her old job. The stark contrast between their appearances—Amy looks pretty rough compared to her perfectly turned-out replacement—highlights just how different her life now is.  It seems to me that this image of identity loss will resonate with all who face the struggle to reclaim oneself after a major life event, but especially with new mothers.  

Isolation 

Though Amy’s character is married, her husband is often absent, working long hours to provide financially. When he is home, he seems to want the pre-motherhood version of his wife, engaging only in the lighter aspects of parenting while avoiding the ongoing challenges. This dynamic leaves Amy’s character feeling alone and disconnected from her husband. Not only that, Amy’s initial attempts to connect with other mothers at her child’s nursery fall flat. Although they share the bond of motherhood, she finds their conversations unfulfilling. Similarly, when she reconnects with her old work friends, she discovers their lives have moved on without her, deepening her sense of displacement. She doesn’t fit in at home, at work, or in her community. She is trapped between worlds and is deeply isolated. Nightbitch offers a powerful antidote to Insta-perfect images of parenthood. The stark visual this film provides of the mother running away from the home at night as a dog challenges us to take seriously the need for mothers to escape claustrophobic societal expectations and to find autonomy, community and support.  

Inequality 

The third key theme explored in the film is the inequality between the male and female experiences of parenthood, as it portrays how much of the burden falls on women. Statistics only confirm the ongoing gender disparities, with women far more likely than men to reduce working hours and sacrifice their career prospects. Women disproportionately shoulder the long-term economic and professional consequences of parenthood, as well as the day-to-day duties of parenting. Add to this the emotional impact of isolation and identity loss, and the burden becomes almost insurmountable. This cumulative strain is faced by all those who are expected to seamlessly transition from independent individuals to selfless caregivers, often with little structural support. The film lays bare how these pressures, left unaddressed, can fracture not only individual lives but the entire stability of the family.  

The film left me with questions:  

Have I played my part? 

As a father, watching this film prompted me to reflect deeply on my own family dynamic. Do we divide responsibilities fairly? Have one person’s dreams or ambitions been side-lined for the sake of the others? Do I overlook or undervalue what my wife does?  What happened to the balance we originally envisioned and agreed upon as a couple?   

Where is the support? 

I also wondered about the structural support needed for those beginning their parenting journey. Then I remembered who facilitates tens of thousands of parent and toddler groups each week across the UK – the Church. Over a third of children under four attend these groups, translating to millions of parents and carers finding access to a lifeline – a welcoming environment and space for connection and mutual support. Do churches know what an important role they are playing? Do new parents know what is available to them there? 

Is parenting only a burden? 

While the film expresses brilliantly the challenges of parenthood, does it do so at the expense of expressing its joys? In my own experience parenting 30 children through birth, fostering, and adoption in almost the same number of years, I am still trying to work through the paradoxes. How can it be both overwhelming and overwhelmingly enriching. Both lonely, and connect us to the privilege of unconditional love? How is it that in parenting the best things in life cost everything and nothing? 

At the London Film Festival Premiere that I attended, Amy Adams also reflected personally on the film: 

“It gave me an opportunity to not only tell my relationship with my mother but also my sister and my friends…. There was a deep universality to the experience of motherhood but also the exploration of relationship inside of parenthood,, the relationship with husband. Everything just fell so true, relatable, and funny.” 

In the end, Nightbitch is more than a dark, fantastical, funny tale of transformation; it’s a powerful mirror held up to modern family life that everyone can benefit from considering. It challenges traditional gender roles and expectations, inspires reflection on sacrifices and struggles, and provokes important questions about identity, privilege and partnership in the complex journey of parenthood and beyond.  

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Essay
Art
Culture
Trauma
7 min read

From egalitarian to elite: 100 years of Art Deco

Birthed by a lost generation, its legacy is not what its creators sought

Sarah Basemera is a circular economy enthusiast and a founder of Canopi, a boutique for recrafted furniture.

An art deco poster shows the heads of three woman against a beach background.
McGill Library on Unsplash.

Agatha Christie, The Savoy Hotel, Cartier, The Great Gatsby, and All That Jazz sit under the gilt-edge umbrella that is Art Deco. This design movement blossomed for two decades. In 2025, Art Deco turns 100 years old. Today, it's a celebrated era for its gift to design, but what can we learn from this period, and how have the ideologies of this period stood the test of time? 

Art Deco saw  geometric patterns with rectilinear lines, rich jewel contrasting colours with luxury exotic materials, virtuosic craftsmanship, and streamlined expression in architecture, furniture, fashion, art, and jewelry.  

On the surface, this style had many muses, from traditional African art to Cubism. It linked the discovery of Tutankhamen in 1926 with the ceramics of Japan. The bold theatrical colours of the costumes and stage designs of the Ballet Russes, also made a huge impression on Deco creatives. It infused their work with the first vibrant, intense strokes of modern design.  

Over the past 100 years, we have applied Art Deco ideas in different ways, taking what we want from it when we needed to. 

It was the first truly international style, yet it had distinct local expressions. American Art Deco – such as the ornate topped skyscrapers like the Empire State building, had a different expression from opulent Parisian objects such as Cartier alabaster cigar boxes. 

The original Art Deco creatives sought to capture the essence of beauty refined to its simplest form. There was a focus on geometric shapes, symmetry and measured ornamentation.  They wanted to remove the excess frills of previous generations and refine the design.   

Under the gilt-edged Art Deco umbrella were two somewhat opposing arms – the decadent strand vs the essentialist. Today, in popular culture, we remember this period for the Roaring Twenties, excess and hedonism. The decadent strand favoured luxurious, opulent craftsmanship. Its products were attainable only by a small pool of wealthy patrons. 

The essentialist strand – "Art Deco de Moderne" began with noble intentions. They prized efficiency and simplicity, characterised by geometric rectilinear designs. These creatives wanted design to respond to the changing needs of the age. They wanted great design to be accessible to more people. Both strands recognised the power of design to elevate the human experience. They invested in the endeavour to craft beauty across the entire sphere of life, from elevated factories to generous streamlined apartments. 

Vogue Cup and Saucer, 1930, V&A Museum.

An art deco cup and saucer on display.
Vogue cup and saucer, 1930.

100 years later, the problem of accessibility of good design hasn't been fixed. Craftspeople still need to find ways to sustain a living. Handmade design from natural materials is still mainly attainable by the wealthiest. Local craftsmanship is in crisis, and many of us do not know and cannot afford artisans to make things for us from natural materials. Many skilled artisans cannot maintain workshops in our cities. 

Art Deco designers may not have described themselves as hedonists, but they certainly produced goods with this dazzling class in mind. These designers had to be at ease with this world and knew how to play its game to remain commercially viable. So why did the Art Deco Age gush with an ideology of hedonism?  

The philosophy of hedonism from the interwar period reflected the worldview of the so-called 'Lost Generation'. American author Gertrude Stein famously said to a young Ernest Hemingway years after World War I: 

"All of you young people who served in the war... You are all a lost generation . . . You have no respect for anything. You drink yourself to death ...". 

This mood was the backdrop to the literary and creative landscape of the 1920s. 

 When the Great War ended, people wanted to celebrate - play, party and travel, but euphoria for some turned to excess. The simple joys of living here and now became an absolute value. They had witnessed the horrors of war, the fragility of life and were jubilant, wishing to live life to the full. Knowing life could be cut short, the doyennes of the age swung into excess, supposedly breaking free of Christian values, only to find they became trapped in cycles of gratification that didn't deliver. "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!" 

This unbridled hedonism was their feast after the plague - it was a coping mechanism. They couldn't think about the future – living here and now was a maxim underpinning this period.  

The Lost Generation grasped the concept of being present in the moment, but they also discovered numbing pain was a deeply unsatisfying solution. 

Fast forward a hundred years, and hedonism is still elusive and utterly unhelpful. It still has a numbing rather than a healing effect. Perhaps its modern relative is bingeing. You know what your binge is, and so does Netflix and our NHS.  

What can the hedonists hijack of Art Deco teach us? Looking sympathetically on this era – hedonism appears to be a coping mechanism. Something humans have needed for aeons. "Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own",said Jesus. The Lost Generation grasped the concept of being present in the moment, but they also discovered numbing pain was a deeply unsatisfying solution. 

Ideally, the weight of grief and loss must be wrestled with, carried, shared and not buried. In great pain, it is still wiser to face it, wrestle, get help and cry out to God. In our age, we have the benefit of hindsight to know that burying trauma produces unhealthy outcomes in the long term. We have the privilege of being able to access counsellors, therapists and psychologists.  

The fragility of being in the shadow of death doesn't hang over us today in the West, because we haven't had a recent World War. The closest reminder came through the COVID-19 pandemic. For a moment, we were all forced to focus on simpler things and live less frenetically.  

Another ideology underpinning the age of Art Deco was the belief in the transformative power of the machine age. In this era, confidence rose in the ability of machines.  Steamships, aeroplanes, automobiles, electrification and telecommunications were transformative innovations.  

The rise of machines represented a break from the failed past and the move into modernity into the future. Some of the more modern leaning Art Deco designers took inspiration from the shapes of the new machines and hoped that mass production would lead to more democratic outcomes, with good design being available to all. From Art Deco de Moderne, we began to learn the beauty of simplicity. Efficiency and essentialism were prized. It was the forerunner to Modernism proper. Sadly, this aspect has been butchered over the decades and reproduced unfaithfully in architecture and consumer products. The principle of celebrating the inventiveness of man slowly evolved into something less noble. The desire to return to the essence of good design was galvanised by the need to rebuild fast after World War Two, both as a sign of triumphalism but also to give the nation decent homes. Council house homes were built quickly to rehouse the nation using cheap materials. 

Today, mass production has indeed made design more accessible. More of us have access to contemporary-designed objects and clothes because they are manufactured quickly out of cheap, synthetic, non-biodegradable, toxic materials, at the sweat and tears of workers who are trapped in inhumane conditions, rarely seeing sunlight or fair wages. 

Nevertheless, 100 Years of Art Deco design has shown us that quality still endures over quantity. The Art Deco legacy of brilliant buildings made of robust materials, with subtle virtuoso ornamentation, has survived the test of time. Though more of us can enjoy contemporary design at affordable prices, I doubt we will cherish most of what we own today even 20 years from now. It is mass-produced, less durable and made from low-grade materials and built to pass. 

Art Deco teaches us, our legacy is not in our hands but in those who remember us. Today, we look back at Art Deco not as egalitarian or hopeful but as opulent and lavish. The intellectuals of that age openly lived torn by their excesses, some even dying by suicide. Yet it was meant to be designed for the ordinary person and to elevate all. By simplifying design to its essence, it was supposed to democratise design. 

From Wall Street Deco to the frivolous woos and woes of Wodehousian characters and music in the keys of Jazz, this era has made its distinguished, enduring mark on the arts. Beneath the sparkle, what has developed an enduring patina with age, is the high quality of craftsmanship across all fields. 

Looking beyond the arts, the Lost Generation has taught us that escapism is elusive and to be cautious but not charmed by machines. We can delight in excellent craftsmanship and cherish the beauty of essence. 

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