Director/star Marianna Palka‘s Cannes hit Bitch (which had its Canadian premiere at the 2017 Fantasia Film Festival) is a gritty, animalistic family dramedy with so many underlining emotions and symbols running throughout that it becomes something much more; this movie takes chances and succeeds and more films need to follow its lead.
Bitch opens on a rather sad note with Jill (Palka) trying to hang herself on her dinning room ceiling fan. It doesn’t work and the fan [and her] crash to the floor. Being a strong mother and wife, she continues about her day. Fixing lunches for the kids, saying goodbye to her husband Bill (Jason Ritter) as he leaves for work in the morning. Almost like she wasn’t just moments before suspended by a belt in the dinning room, the shattered remains of the fan still on the floor. It’s not long after this that Jill disappears, leaving Bill in charge of getting the kids to school, making their lunches, picking them up from school, making them dinner, being a father. For lack of a better phrase. He lashes out, he blames Jill for leaving, he hates her for doing this to him even though he doesn’t care about her. He has been cheating with a co-worker at his office. He calls Beth (Jaime King) Jill’s sister to come over and help him while he tries to navigate this whole ordeal. When the kids finally find out where their mother is, it is initially comical, right up until you actually see her: turns out she’s naked in the basement covered in her own feces, howling like a dog.
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