★★★★☆

THE depiction of motherhood has been a well from which cinema has fruitfully drawn over the years. Collaborating in the same capacity for the third time following Juno and Young Adult, director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody throw their bib into the ring for a perceptive, bittersweet, warts-and-all portrayal that feels like a love letter to motherhood itself.

Marlo (Charlize Theron) is a suburban mother of two with another one on the way very soon, living a normal, some might even say boring life with her long-time husband Drew (Ron Livingston).

One day her far more financially successful brother Craig (Mark Duplass) gifts her with a night nanny, someone who will temporarily be there to take care of things while Marlo gets some sleep.

At first she finds the idea ridiculous but once the baby comes and she finds it increasingly difficult to cope, she decides to hire the night nanny in the form of the much younger and in-control Tully (Mackenzie Davis, pictured). Initially wary of Tully’s confidence and overt friendliness, the two of them start to form a unique bond which leads to some surprising revelations.

This feels like something of a thematic continuation of Reitman and Cody’s Young Adult in particular. In that Theron played a woman struggling with the very idea of what it means to be grown up, stuck in a rut of past behaviour and holding on to grudges.

Tully deals with that most adult of responsibilities: being a parent and what it means when that becomes your entire world. The school runs, making sure each of the kids’ needs are attended to – her son in particular has behavioural difficulties – grabbing every moment of sleep you can, pumping breast milk to be frozen for later. It certainly doesn’t shy away from showing what motherhood entails. But it also runs deeper than that.

Cody’s script lets go of much of the sharp-tongued sarcasm that made her name with Juno more than a decade ago (peppering the dialogue with it rather than filling it up) for a kind of naturalistic wisdom as the film examines Marlo’s deep-seated anxiety that she’s not a good enough mother or that her formerly happy-go-lucky life has faded into intangibility.

This is an example of a director and writer working in perfect unison. As Reitman develops the key relationship between Marlo and the eponymous Tully into something fascinating and provocative, it deals with the concept that motherhood is, for some, a way of ending a carefree life once lived.

Even as it throws in a late-stage turn in the road that isn’t entirely needed, it’s got such engaging charm and emotional depth, it’s easy to just go with it.

Anchored to a brilliantly committed and unflinching performance by Theron, the depiction of the beautiful, messy, frustrating and rewarding struggle of everyday motherhood and the fears that permeate beyond means that, whether you’re part of the depicted demographic or not, it positively aches with truthfulness.