‘Mother’s Baby’ review: Postpartum stress under the lens in meticulous Berlin title

Dir. Johanna Moder. Austria/Switzerland/Germany 2025. 108 minutes.  

Austrian drama Mom’s Child is just not a style movie, however it’s undoubtedly a horror story. A research of postpartum melancholy, it depicts a lady whose sense of self – and finally, of actuality – is radically affected by the arrival of her first child. Very a lot rooted in real-world points that many viewers will certainly recognise, the movie feels meticulously calibrated in its emotional complexity and centres on a riveting efficiency from Marie Leuenberger, affecting and deeply upsetting in turns.

Elegantly shot in a mode of extremely atmospheric realism

Following the movie’s Berlinale competitors debut, it should certainly make ripples on the pageant circuit and may safe area of interest distribution (the assist casting of worldwide star Claes Bang will little question assist). However this appears an eminent case of a movie that can require content material warnings, given its distressing themes.

Directed and co-written by Johanna Moder – following Excessive Efficiency, As soon as Had been Rebels and TV work together with collection Faculty of Champions – the movie focuses on a 40-year-old girl, Julia Bode (Leuenberger), a extremely profitable orchestral conductor. She and her husband Georg (Hans Löw) have been attempting for a child, and have consulted Dr Vilfort (Bang), advisor at a non-public fertility clinic. The movie’s opening part takes us at a brisk tempo via scenes from the couple’s joyful, comfy life and shut, supportive relationship – then, in an prolonged, tense and boldly executed one-take sequence, reveals the supply of Julia’s child. Then the temper adjustments – the infant is faraway from the room, and the couple are left questioning what precisely has gone unsuitable and when they are going to see their little one.

It’s not lengthy, nevertheless, earlier than they’re reassured: their little one is a boy, and whereas he wanted to be briefly moved to a neonatal ward, quickly the household can all go dwelling and begin a brand new life. Nonetheless, Julia doesn’t really feel safe: watching the kid intently, she worries that he isn’t reacting to stimuli, or that he sleeps an excessive amount of and too deeply. And the frenzy of maternal contentment and the speedy emotional connection that she has been taught to count on are usually not occurring. She additionally feels threatened by the eye paid to her little one by others, like younger midwife Gerlinde (Julia Franz Richter, additionally starring in fellow Berlin maternal thriller Welcome Residence Child). And more and more, she begins to suspect that she has been lied to. 

Central to our understanding of Julia is the truth that she is a lady of nice mental {and professional} experience accustomed to performing underneath intense stress, and somebody with understanding of the complexity of emotional states. Other than placing her new vulnerability in a really explicit context, this makes it all of the extra traumatic when she feels that she has misplaced management of each her profession and her elementary self. She additionally turns into conscious about being spoken about as if she weren’t current, when Georg and Dr Vilfort speak about her within the third particular person.

The casting of Danish star Bang, who rose to fame with The Sq., is astute; his charismatic Vilfort initially comes throughout as embodying a reassuring skilled gravitas, however more and more we see indicators of a patronising, authoritarian angle in the direction of sufferers. As Julia turns into more and more suspicious of Vilfort, components of horror and thriller creep in steadily, till they’re amplified to the acute within the movie’s remaining act. That is the place audiences could really feel that the movie goes too far, not least in introducing a brand new register of stylisation – however Moder performs ambivalence expertly right here, leaving us unsure of what we’re seeing, and of the diploma to which Julia’s melancholy has change into full-blown psychosis.

Julia shifts modes from scene to scene, and Leuenberger’s extraordinary efficiency is modulated with arresting experience, matching the dynamics of a movie that maintains a register of delicate restraint till the closing crescendo – musical analogies being inevitable. And a moody, quietly ominous rating by Diego Ramos Rodriguez is cleverly built-in with Julia’s personal repertoire of Schubert, Beethoven and Mozart. Elegantly shot by Robert Oberrainer in a mode of extremely atmospheric realism, it is a movie altogether orchestrated with talent,and a really troubling one.