QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN

Julia (Marie Leuenberger) is a successful conductor and a woman with a very strong will. She lives with her doting partner Georg (Hans Löw), and they are determined to have a baby. IVF expert Dr Vilford (Claes Bang) lends them a helping hand, allowing the couple to fulfil their parental ambitions. Nine months later they return to the same clinic for Julia to give birth. That’s when it all begins to go awry.

The birth is a very difficult one, with Julia being surprised by an epidural injection. She gives birth to seemingly lifeless baby. The newborn does not cry, and it is stiff as a board. The obstetricians rush it to the neonatal intensive care unit, leaving Julia and Georg in panic. They return with a seemingly healthy baby boy the following day, as if nothing had happened. But Julia does not bond with him. Instead she gives him an ugly look, before hesitantly taking him home.

Julia’s emotional rejection of her baby grows stronger. She grudgingly bathes, breastfeeds and changes him. The expression of contempt on her face is clearly discernible. She repeatedly pinches and startles the little one in order to ensure that he’s indeed alive, and finds it extremely unsettling that he does not cry as much as she expected. This gloomy mum does share the enthusiasm of her husband and friends. She even refuses to name the baby, despite the legal deadline for registration quickly approaching. She heartbreakingly confesses to her husband: “I wanted a baby, but not this one”.

Our headstrong protagonist reacts furiously as a kind and relaxed Georg asks whether she fed the baby. The finds the idea that anyone should question her motherly skills deeply insulting. She does not follow the advice of friends and professionals. She thinks that everyone around her is trying to gaslight her. The mere mention of postnatal depression has potential to unleash a hurricane of emotions. If she can control a large orchestra with countless musicians of all sorts, surely she must be able to take the reins of her own very small family of three.

The effectiveness of Mother’s Baby lies on its ability to sustain ambiguity for its entire duration of nearly two hours. It is never clear whether Julia is slipping into insanity, or if those around her (particularly the medical staff at the clinic) are conspiring against the poor woman, a predicament very similar to the one of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary Baby (1968). The difference here is that the baby has already been born. Little clues leave viewers to think both ways: if on one hand Vilford’s team seem very honest and professional, on the other hand it is very strange they should omit that a patient at the same clinic lost her child on the same day as Julia gave birth. The script is extremely well threaded, leaving no loose ends at all. All the small elements have a significance. A creepy house fish that comes back to haunt Julia adds a touch of symbolism to the story, while also proving Mother’s Baby with its most gruesome sequence.

The ominous music score is laid out evenly. The dramatic strings – perhaps akin to Julia’s music at work – are pervasive yet never invasive. Aided by Leuenberger’s unshakeable expression of fear, they help to craft an atmosphere of unrelenting tension. Not all production values are impeccable though: the birth scene is abruptly short, and a little clumsily staged, and a prosthetic breast (in a breastfeeding scene) is clearly a prop,

The film title refers to the English say “mother’s baby, father maybe”, which suggests that maternity is more reliable than paternity. This is the same principle upon which Judaism relies, and the reason why such religious affiliation is passed through the mother. In other words, a mother can always recognise her child, and vice-versa. A father does not possess the same instincts. The question is whether Julia will honour or subvert the proverb. A peculiar ending provides viewers with some sort of closure, even if it does not answer all questions.

Mother’s Baby just premiered in the Official Competition of the 75th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival. This isn’t the only film in the Official Competition of the Berlinale this year dealing wit the topic of fraught motherhood.