A tale of motherhood that will pose the hardest of questions, Birth/Rebirth is a restrained debut feature from Laura Moss that throws us into an unexpected perspective—a fascinating viewing.
A morgue technician successfully reanimates the body of a little girl, but to keep her breathing, she will need to harvest biological materials from pregnant women. When the girl’s mother, a nurse, discovers her baby alive, they enter into a deal that forces them both down a dark path of no return.
Birth/Rebirth is at its best when it remains grounded and uneasy while battling the ethical questions that come with reanimating a body. There is a griminess and, indeed, bleakness that you cannot shake at any point throughout the film. An expert level of dread clouds over every character, and that dread is as fantastic as it is necessary. For you know that what these two women are wanting need to create will not turn out as they hoped. It is a film that will not have that happy ending. Reanimating a human body rarely provides a chirpy finale, after all.
The desperation presented within both of the leads works so well. Celia is in pieces over her daughter and rightfully will do whatever she can to ensure that she keeps living. Even if what has awoken is a far sight from who that little girl was. Similarly, Rose wants to create and discover the meaning of life but is so skewed in her own mindset of bypassing death to the point that she gets so desperate to keep her “creations” alive by killing her own foetuses and horrifically evicting them from her body. It is a tale of motherhood that you will not have seen before.
There are the occasional moments where characters betray what we have seen of them previously to further the story, yet thanks to the performances, you let it slide. You are never quite sure which direction Birth/Rebirth is going to go either. Will it suddenly follow its more body horror trope than you would expect? Or would it, in fact, keep to the strong motherly dark drama? At times, it almost seems conflicted with itself in which way it will sway before sticking the landing.
It is the partnership of Rose and Celia that carries the film forward, with both Marin Ireland and Judy Reyes being a tremendously odd couple. Ireland’s deathly dark comedic timing brings unexpected laughs to her Frankenstein-esque Rose. Whereas Reyes is pure heart and emotion, her grief-racked Celie is falling apart at the seams and has no cushioning to help her. Both bounce off each other well, and when the absurd does trickle into the film, they keep the audience zoned in.
Imagine a Re-Aminator that keeps some of the humour but far more heart than you would expect, and you would get a good idea of what Birth/Rebirth offers. However, as mentioned at the beginning, this is really a tale about the devastating moments that can afflict some mothers and deep down, it poses that horrible question. What would you do in Celie’s situation if there was even a hint of a chance?
★★★★
The Fantasia International Film Festival takes place in Montreal from July 20th through August 9th.
For more of our coverage of Fantasia 2023, please see below:
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