Review of Mother and Child (2009) by Andrew S — 05 Feb 2011

We follow three main characters in Mother & Child. We're introduced to all of them in the first ten minutes. Annette Bening plays a woman who had a daughter as a teenager but gave her up for adoption and has never seen her. Naomi Watts plays her daughter, now a successful lawyer. Upfront these two women seem to be two very cold people. For the first 20 minutes I wondered how I was going to watch this two-hour movies when it was so hard to invest in these characters. I blame direction for this problem. It's not that there's anything wrong with having difficult characters, but you have to make sure that there's something interesting about them so that we can actually care a little bit.

Be patient, though. Eventually we get to know these characters better. We start to understand them more, and see more to them. At that point I thought the movie was going in the right direction. Unfortunately, there were still other problems.

My biggest problem with this movie is that there are too many subplots. They try to blend together at the end, but they never really feel right together. One of these subplots involves a couple looking to adopt because they cannot have children of their own. The characters in this film are so bland and their story is nothing new. There inclusion in the film only takes time away from the more interesting performances from Watts and Bening.

I also had problem with the character development of Bening. Her character's personality suddenly changes throughout the movie. I do believe people can change in real life, but in the movies we have to doubtful when people suddenly change their life right before our eyes.

Now, leave those things behind and we still have something interesting in this movie. The character played by Watts turns out to be quite an interesting person. She's a person who's locked herself away from the rest of the world. She does this by moving around constantly. She even has relationships, but for some reason, doesn't seem to ever consider the idea of settling and won't allow the relationships to go anywhere.

With Mother & Child you get one fascinating character study, one average story of regret, and one boring melodrama. Put all three of these together and you result in a mess.