Written and directed by Daniele Campea, Mother Nocturna (Madre Notturna) is a psychological drama about isolation, female rage, and a handful of Freudian family issues. Bathed in moonlight and steeped in folkloric imagery, the film takes viewers to a dark place (literally and figuratively) as it illustrates a grieving mother’s slow spiral into madness. While the story is stretched a bit thin across the film’s 100 minutes, Campea’s clear aesthetic vision remains strong throughout. The harmonious artistic direction and cohesive core imagery provide structure and strength while giving viewers access to the deeply suppressed emotions at the heart of the conflict. While the themes of Mother Nocturna may be familiar, its compelling artistic execution makes for a satisfying and thought-provoking viewing experience.
Sofia Ponente as Arianna in MOTHER NOCTURNA. Photo courtesy of Buffalo 8.
Susanna Costaglione (Macbeth – Neo Film Opera) leads the small but mighty cast as Agnese, a wolf biologist and mother who, at the start of the film, is ending her stay at a psychiatric hospital. Edoardo Oliva plays her husband, Riccardo, a seemingly kindhearted doctor who warmly welcomes his wife back home (yet, his high-collared black jacket gives him a distinctly vampiric look that casts a shadow over his caring and friendly attitude, planting a subtle seed of distrust that enhances the tension between him and his wife as the story develops). Sofia Ponente rounds out the trio as Agnese and Riccardo’s teenage daughter, Arianna, a quiet and melancholy young woman whose sole emotional outlet is dance. Her raw, writhing, and ritualistic dancing, which is placed strategically throughout the film to add bursts of energy to the otherwise slow cadence, could easily land her a spot in Suspiria’s Markos Dance Academy (from the 2018 version, that is). Arianna isn’t quite as thrilled as her father about Agnese’s release from the hospital, expressing concern that her mother’s psychosis will only return in full force. Indeed, it isn’t long before Agnese begins displaying odd behavior, which seems to be connected to the moon and the wolves that she studies. When Riccardo is quarantined away from home after testing positive for a virus (this is a pandemic movie, by the way), Agnese and Arianna find themselves trapped in their house together to face the ever-deepening rifts in their relationship.
L-R: Sofia Ponente as Arianna, Susanna Costaglione as Agnese, and Edoardo Oliva as Riccardo in MOTHER NOCTURNA. Photo courtesy of Buffalo 8.
This tense and crumbling mother/daughter relationship reveals a handful of interwoven themes (the dark side of motherhood, familial jealousy, and female rage/madness) represented by a set of familiar imagery (the moon, woodland gods, animalistic instincts, blood) that place Mother Nocturna within a well-established literary tradition. The film is so clearly inspired by variations of the “mad woman” trope from mythology, folklore, and gothic literature that it’s easy to pass it off as trite and unoriginal. But what Mother Nocturna lacks in thematic originality it makes up for in artistic execution. Campea makes these tired old themes feel new and interesting by creating an immersive and visceral world that engages the senses in multiple ways.
For starters, Mother Nocturna is very dark (in the literal sense). Many scenes take place at night and even the daytime scenes are dim and shadowy. The film is full of gray and muted tones which give it a cold and deathly appearance. Campea (Macbeth – Neo Film Opera) is very particular with his use of light, using bright light sparingly to help create ghostly shadows. The obvious downside to this darkness is that it makes things very hard to see. The characters’ faces are often shadowed and obscured, and it can be difficult to make out the details of each scene. Perhaps Campea could have shot the film differently to achieve the dark effect without making everything so difficult to see, but the obscuring effect does seem to serve a purpose. It symbolizes the characters’ tangled web of secrets and lies, making it just as difficult for us to figure out what these characters look like as it is for us to figure out what they are like. Agnese, Ricardo, and Arianna are each hiding something, concealing their true selves from each other and the audience. The visual darkness and obscurity enhance this theme, creating the opportunity for viewers to develop a deeper and richer understanding of the story (even if it’s frustrating to watch).
Susanna Costaglione as Agnese in MOTHER NOCTURNA. Photo courtesy of Buffalo 8.
Campea complements the film’s dark look with an unsettling sound design, employing whistling winds, ringing, and low droning noises to help illustrate Agnese’s descent into madness. The haunting score (also composed by Campea) is supplemented by selections from Corelli and Bellini which invoke feelings of coldness and isolation. The chilling sounds of Mother Nocturna, combined with the near-constant darkness, obscure our sense of time and make us feel, like Agnese and Arianna, stuck. The film’s greatest strength is that it gives us a taste of what Agnese is feeling as she goes mad, pulling us into a bleak and isolated world that seems frozen in time.
On the other hand, this sense of being stuck is also the film’s biggest weakness. Mother Nocturna feels extremely slow, even though it’s only 100 minutes long. While the film maintains a strong sense dread and impending doom, things progress so slowly that we get used to the dread and become numb to it (or, we become just become bored with the plot). In making a film that so successfully portrays a slow descent into madness, Campea also made a very slow film. Mother Noctura certainly has a lot to offer, but it’s not the most exciting thing to sit through.
Susanna Costaglione as Agnese in MOTHER NOCTURNA. Photo courtesy of Buffalo 8.
Thankfully, Susanna Costaglione gives a strong, steady, and powerful performance, maintaining believability and intense emotions even when the film as a whole starts to drag. She masters the “slow descent” with nuance and grace, effectively portraying madness, grief, depression, and anger without overdoing it. While there are a few moments in Mother Noctura that require loud and dynamic emotional outbursts, Costaglione shines brightest during the quiet and restrained scenes. She portrays Agnese with a sense of heaviness that seems to suck all the light out of the room, masterfully representing the intense and numbing weight of depression and grief. It is during these powerful yet restrained moments that Mother Nocturna reminds us that madness can be subtle, and it doesn’t always have to scream.
Available on VOD and digital September 27th, 2024.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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