NEW YORK – Is there a dark side to maternal love?

Opening in Singapore cinemas on March 14, the psychological thriller Mothers’ Instinct stars Oscar winners Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway as neighbours who are best friends until a tragic accident involving one of their sons.

A remake of the acclaimed Belgian film Duelles (2018), the movie is set in the United States in the 1960s, and follows the two mothers as their idyllic suburban lives and friendship are shattered by guilt, paranoia and a strange battle of wills.

Speaking at an event in New York in 2023, Chastain says it was a good thing she and fellow American actress Hathaway – they had worked together on the science-fiction drama Interstellar (2014) – were friends before collaborating on Mothers’ Instinct.

That is because the film’s dark subject matter and tense character conflict could have put a strain on the actors.

“I’d like to think of it as a little bit like What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?”, says 46-year-old Chastain, who won the Best Actress Oscar for the biographical drama The Eyes Of Tammy Faye (2021).

She is referring to the 1962 movie starring late American actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford – a comparable tale of a complex, disturbing relationship between two women and the psychological horrors they visit on each other.

But, unlike Davis and Crawford, who famously loathed each other and feuded during the making of the movie, Hathaway and Chastain get along well, and had taken on Mothers’ Instinct after actively looking for another project to collaborate on after Interstellar.

“Of course, (Mothers’ Instinct) is a different kind of film, but it’s this idea of these two actresses coming together and the tension, I think, is very interesting,” says Chastain, who is married to an Italian count – fashion executive Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo, 42 – and has two children aged five and three.

“It’s a throwback to another era,” she adds.

Of Hathaway, she says: “Annie and I love each other, so it was a little different from that experience (on What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?).

“We have a lot of fun in the movie.”

But French director Benoit Delhomme, 62, says bringing this harrowing story to life was challenging for both leading ladies.

“Jessica and Annie are both mothers and, sometimes, it was difficult for me to be the chief of putting the actors into a more fragile position where they had to dig into the emotions.”

This is no doubt why in a 2022 interview with Vogue Hong Kong, Hathaway, 41, described the part as the hardest role she has played.

She is married to American jewellery designer and actor Adam Shulman, 42. They have two sons aged seven and three.

So, to portray a mother who loses her son was to imagine a nightmare.

“It touched on my worst fear and I almost backed out of the film because I didn’t know if I could go there as an actress,” said the star, who took home a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the period musical Les Miserables (2012).

Mothers’ Instinct was produced by Chastain through her production company Freckle Films, and she says she is trying to pivot towards producing more and acting less as her career progresses.

Chastain – who starred in the acclaimed period drama The Help (2011) and terrorism thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012) – wants to highlight creators and performers who might not otherwise be heard.

“It’s important for me to use my platform to amplify the voices of others.

“Sometimes, that’s a writer or a film-maker or a demographic that really doesn’t get much attention in our industry,” she says.

For now, she will continue to star in many of the films her company produces. “Right now, I’m just putting all my weight behind projects.”

• Mothers’ Instinct opens in Singapore cinemas on March 14.