First up in my Frankenstein-a-thon was Birth/Rebirth (2023), directed by Laura Moss and written by both Moss and Brendan J. O’Brien. I watched this at the start of the year and I didn’t yet realize that it would be the beginning of a new hyperfixation. They can really sneak up on you! I’ll be providing a synopsis of the film and then will explore themes and moments that especially stood out to me.
Beware! Spoilers ahead!!!
Birth/Rebirth (2023) follows two women who become intertwined by an unexpected tragedy and the lengths they will go together for their desire to cure death. The film opens with a gut punch of a scene. A woman is being rushed to the hospital and then experiences an emergency c-section. This scene is my absolute nightmare—she keeps asking what’s happening but the focus seems to be on the birth, not on her. It’s loud, blurry, and chaotic. The baby is delivered prematurely and then the mother dies. We do not yet know who she is, what has happened, or the significance of the scene to the story. We see our protagonists immediately following—Celia (played by Judy Reyes) is caring for the newborn baby while Rose (played by Marin Ireland) performs the autopsy on the deceased mother.
Celie (played by Judy Reyes) is an OBGYN nurse and a single mother to sweet young daughter named Lila (played by A.J. lister). Rose is a pathologist working in the same hospital’s morgue. She comes off very detached and cold as she does her work and is dismissive of her co-worker’s needs as a partner and parent. After work, Rose goes to a bar and asks a man to follow her to the bathroom, where she proceeds to jack him off and take both his semen and a blood sample, before leaving him and his questions behind. She looks after a large pig in her apartment, feeding it a precisely measured meal of veggies. Then she inseminates herself with her recently acquired sample.
The next day, Lila comes down with something and tells her mother she doesn’t feel well. Celie cannot stay home from work and drops her off to a neighbor, Pauline (played by Rina Mejia), to watch her for the day. Lila objects, screaming after her mother when she leaves. The already-late Celie doesn’t look back. As a hospital OBGYN nurse, her day moves fast and is very busy, though she is clearly dedicated to providing the best care to prospective and new mothers. She’s warm, listens to her patients, and advocates for them. She continues to check in on her daughter, but is cut off before she can say goodnight to Lila. When she receives the last call, her phone falls in the toilet. Yikes. She finishes her day and then heads home.
When she arrives home, Pauline’s apartment is empty and the door is still open. Blood is on the floor. She finds a note from Pauline, which informs her that Lila had gotten worse very suddenly and been taken to the hospital. Celie panics, rushes back to the hospital, and finds that her daughter has died. She is shocked, sullen, and angry. How could this happen? Evidently her daughter had gotten bacterial meningitis, which can quickly spread and cause severe illness and death. It’s a horrific tragedy and Celie doesn’t seem able to fully process what has happened. But things are about to get much worse.
Before Celie has a chance to see her daughter, the body is taken to the morgue to Rose. Something about Lila catches Rose’s attention, but we aren’t sure why yet. She begins inspecting Lila, paying close attention to her head after wondering aloud about the timing of Lila’s brain death. When Celie arrives asking to see her daughter, Lila’s clothes bagged up in her arms, Rose tells her that the body has already been sent to the medical examiner’s office. Celie is devastated.
Celie talks to her friend and coworker Rita (played by Monique Gabriela Curnen), admitting that she didn’t mind not having her phone for a while. As her friend takes her home, she sees Rose loading things into her vehicle. When Celie goes to the medical examiner’s office, she’s informed that Lila never arrived. What is happening? Rose’s boss Colleen (played by LaChanze) talks to Rose about the situation, who maintains that the body was picked up to be taken to the medical examiner. Must have been their mistake. Right? Celie is rightfully furious and wants to talk to Rose. Celie follows Rose to the parking garage, but Rose leaves in a hurry. Girl, you’re looking more and more suspicious!
It’s obvious that Rose has Lila, but we still don’t know why. Celie isn’t giving up that easily. She tracks Rose down, pushes into her apartment, and finds Lila lying in bed and hooked up to medical equipment—and she’s alive?
“Your daughter’s genetic profile made her a perfect candidate for an experimental treatment I’ve been working on.”
“For meningitis?”
“For death.”
Celie is introduced to Muriel, the very cute pig that we saw earlier, saying that she died two months ago. Rose explains that she uses fetal tissue to regenerate cells, which she can attempt to do with Celie. Rose and Lila are a perfect match for this experiment and that’s why Lila was chosen—and because she’s an organ donor. That’s not exactly what that means, but sure! She’s not sure if it will work, or if she’ll wake up. Celie decides to move in and oversee Lila’s care. There’s some initial conflict between Celie and Rose’s approaches. Rose is very specific, measured, and analytical—usually with a clipboard in hand. Celie goes with her gut and her experience as both a nurse and a mother and quickly teaches Muriel to sit on command (something Rose didn’t expect).
It all starts coming together when Rose, after a 10 week check up, prompts a miscarriage to harvest the fetal tissue. They continue on and Lila takes her own breaths. Rose shares that this has been a lifelong passion prompted by her scientific interests as a child and her mother’s career as a biology teacher. Rose collapses at work, needing emergency surgery. Then, Lila sits up. She’s awake. Rose is delivered the news that had developed an infection of the cervix and can no longer conceive—and when she gets home she finds that the last batch of fetal material is no longer usable. They don’t have enough serum and don’t know how they’ll get more perinatal tissue. Rose has been harvesting her own fetal tissue for this research and can’t anymore. So, now what?
Lila is more responsive now. And Rose found another match—a patient. Rose decides to botch the results for a prenatal test that a pregnant patient, Emily (played by Breeda Wool), had recently done. If Rose can keep her coming back for amniocenteses, they can use the amniotic fluid for their serum. Celie objects, understanding how stressful this will be on Emily. But what is her alternative? How else can they keep Lila alive? Celie is Emily’s nurse now and offers her some advice and comfort. Emily has been trying to conceive for three years and has a lot of anxiety around this pregnancy, which is the furthest along she has gotten.
“Dignity and motherhood don’t always line up.”
As Rose continues working with Lila, they become closer. Lila is standoffish towards Celie, who seems upset at her daughter’s reactions to her. Celie is also horrified to find out that Rose will have to continue declaring the amnio tests as inconclusive so that Emily will keep doing them. Once Emily gives birth, they will take her placenta and use that to make the remaining serum that they need for the year.
Meanwhile, Rose is stretched thin. She’s monitoring both Muriel and Lila. She misses a serum dose for Muriel, but is able to stabilize her in time. Celie goes through Rose’s videos of exercises with Lila and finds a recording that shows Rose’s earlier experiments on her own deceased mother. Celie is disgusted and becomes distant from Lila. Emily is becoming increasingly frustrated at the continued amnio tests and informs Celie that she is switching hospitals. She can’t take this anymore and, understandably, wants to try a new hospital. Celie and Rose fight over what to do next, with Rose exclaiming that she’s doing everything that she can.
“This adhoc triage we’ve been doing - it isn’t science!”
“No, it’s medicine. But you aren’t that kind of doctor, are you?”
While Rose takes a moment to shower, Lila tries to interact with Muriel. Muriel snaps at her defensively and Lila brutally kills her. She approaches Rose, bloody and terrifying. Afterwards, Rose makes a breakthrough, realizing that her bone marrow may be used to help compensate for the lack of serum. Celie performs the procedure and Rose tries to use other placentas to make it work. It doesn’t work and Lila is declining. Rose encourages Celie to take time off from work and spend time with Lila while she can.
Rose has been making mistakes at work and her boss talks with her. She tries to empathize with her, explaining that she also had multiple miscarriages and had to accept that she couldn’t have children. She had to let that go — and Rose should let go to. But, she doesn’t realize what Rose is actually unable to let go. It’s not having children, but her work. Her purpose is to create life out of death.
“And that’s enough for you?”
Celie holds Lila’s hand as she passes. It’s over… or is it? Rose arrives home to find Celie gone, Lila dead, and her body in the freezer. Celie shows up at Emily’s home with her medical records, explaining she wanted to make sure she got them. Celie makes Emily tea and slips something into it. Next we see Emily on the floor, seizing, and it becomes clear who she is. Emily is the woman from the opening scene. She comes to and the c-section is happening. She seizes again and dies.
“The baby is going to be fine, I promise you.”
“What about me?”
Rose harvests the placenta and returns home to Celie. Celie explains that she was trying to induce labor, not kill Emily. The two of them create the serum and successfully bring Lila back for the second time. And that’s the movie!
Let’s get into the themes of the film. Obviously this is a film that heavily centers motherhood and what lengths a mother will go to for her child. Even in moments when Celie is horrified at what it will take to maintain the serum, she proceeds. She even goes further than Rose had suggested, putting another mother and her child at risk. She may have insisted that she didn’t intend to kill Emily, but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t cause her death.
Speaking of Emily’s death, that was one of the more difficult elements of the film for me given that I live in the United States—a country notorious for its high mortality rate for pregnant people. During and after childbirth, women and other pregnant people are routinely ignored and mistreated. This is especially true for women of color. Hearing Emily ask, “what about me?” made my heart drop into my stomach. She knew that with concern on her baby, it was no longer on her.
Rose, though she was disinterested in motherhood, was focused on her purpose. She may not have been a mother per se, but she was creating life out of death and nurturing and fostering that life. She was a mother in this film in her own way. I don’t say this in a all women are basically mommies kind of way. But because in this film, I felt that Rose and Celie were both mothers to this new Lila. They were creating a sort of queer family—in a demented horror movie kind of way! When Celie needed a break, Rose held Lila and put her to bed. When Rose wasn’t taking care of herself, Celie fed her and encouraged her to rest. Some of my favorite moments in the film were the two women connecting with each other and focusing on this shared goal—or obsession.
As with the original Frankenstein story, there is a theme of not accepting death and perceiving it as something that can be scientifically solved. But in this film, it’s a little more challenging. Though Lila is awake, and seems somewhat aware, she’s also very much not herself. Celie can tell but keeps trying anyway. It’s another element of the film that was devastating to me. I don’t think Celie could admit that her daughter was actually gone and may not come back. If she did, then she’d have to deal with her guilt for not being there when she was sick, and for the relief she felt at having that time. This is something I’ve heard mothers talk about—needing breaks from their kids but then feeling guilt over it, whether from societal pressure or those around them. Obviously Celie had no way of knowing what would happen that day. But it haunts her and keeping Lila (or whoever she is now) alive is how she can keep that guilt at bay.
In the original Frankenstein novel, Dr. Frankenstein immediately rejects his creation when he opens his eyes. But in Birth/Rebirth, the mothers of this creation do not turn from her—even when she bludgeons poor Muriel. Because they, unlike Dr. Frankenstein, don’t abandon what they’ve started. You’ve gotta respect their commitment! There are some parallels between Rose and Dr. Frankenstein though. They both see death as something that can be fixed or cured with science, but Rose is trying to bring single bodies back to life—not piecing parts back together. Both of them were close with their mothers and traumatized by their deaths. They’re also both focused entirely on their work. It consumes them, makes them sick. With Dr. Frankenstein, he becomes weak and sickly when he’s deep in his work. Rose dismisses not feeling well and almost dies of an infection. Rose did felt distinctly different than the Dr. Frankenstein archetype though. She listened to Celie and accepted new ideas. I don’t think she was driven by ego, like Dr. Frankenstein, but by a real belief that death could be prevented or reversed and that her research was “bigger than herself.”
I wouldn’t say I enjoyed this movie, as it’s incredibly bleak and I think two watches was enough for me. But I was definitely drawn in, connected with the characters, and understood their motivations—even if I shouting at the TV for Celie to just stop. Marin Ireland and Judy Reyes were spectacular and had a really interesting dynamic. I also appreciated the anecdote about the starfish and its regenerative abilities and how that inspired a young Rose to think about how the human body can regenerate. This especially makes sense given that her mother would later die of a degenerative disease, Parkinson’s. With covid-19 continuing to surge and damage our immune systems, I think many of us wish that there was a way to overcome death. But unfortunately, there just isn’t. We die. So we should be doing what we can to protect ourselves and each other and mask up—the vaccine isn’t enough and pretending covid is gone isn’t either. I think that in the context of Frankenstein adaptations it’s extremely relevant. Rampant covid-19 deaths can be prevented. Growing cases of long covid can be prevented.
Finally, as someone who isn’t a mother and doesn’t want to be, this movie terrified me. Not only what could happen during pregnancy and childbirth, but what kinds of choices I’d have to make to protect my child(ren). Sure, I’d probably not kill an innocent person to bring my dead child back… but do I really know that? It seems that motherhood is an unpredictable experience and can change you in ways that you don’t anticipate. I commend people for being brave enough to parent in the fucked up world that we live in.
Next up in my Frankenstein-a-thon will be a piece on Poor Things (2023). I can’t wait to get my thoughts out about it because WOW—it was a lot!
Thanks for reading. <3
-Kelly