Review of Mother and Child (2009) by Carrie S — 05 Jun 2010

Karen (Annette Bening) is a 51-year-old physical therapist who had a baby girl at age fourteen who she was forced to give up for adoption. Though she's made no attempt to find her daughter, Karen has been obsessed with her ever since, writing her letters she can't mail and buying her birthday presents she can't deliver. She's turned into a bitter, friendless wacko who despises children and snaps at anyone who's the least bit warm to her. She's never forgiven her mother, with whom she lives, for her role in what she sees as essentially ruining her life.

Karen's new co-worker Paco (Jimmy Smits with a huge gut, which I read is actually a fat suit) is romantically interested in her. I suppose his initial attraction is understandable -- Karen is still pretty despite her preternaturally wrinkled neck -- but if Paco had even an ounce of self-respect, he'd stop pursuing her after his first couple of attempts are met with extreme rudeness. Apparently he does not.

Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) is the 37-year-old daughter who Karen gave up for adoption. A job-hopping lawyer with impressive credentials, Karen is one of those beautiful, ultra-successful, supremely-confident women who you see all the time in movies and on TV, but very rarely in real life. She values her independence above all and uses her sexuality to exert power over men simply because she can. One such willing victim is the head of her new law firm, an older widower named Paul (Samuel L. Jackson).

Lucy and Joseph are an upscale young couple who have been trying unsuccessfully for some time to conceive a child. They've recently decided to give up "trying" and to go the adoption route instead, with Lucy leading the charge. An agency sets them up with a pregnant young college student named Ray who makes it clear that since she's the one having the baby, she's the one who gets to call all the shots. Things sure have changed since Karen was pregnant in the early 70s; shame and secrecy have been replaced with cockiness and power.

At just over two hours long, Mother and Child feels a bit draggy at times -- surely some more judicious editing would've helped. All three stories are fairly compelling, though not necessarily convincing. Karen begins the film as a hilariously acerbic bitch but undergoes some sort of magical transformation along the way and ends up as a simpering ball of maternal instinct. Elizabeth, whose initial ice-queeniness is never really explained (are we to believe she's turned out this way because she was adopted?), undergoes a thawing transformation of her own, eventually even deigning to befriend a blind teenager who lives in the same building. The Lucy and Joseph story is perhaps the most realistic, at least in the sense that it doesn't involve a dramatic and instantaneous personality makeover.

Mother and Child features some fine acting and has a great ensemble cast. Samuel L. Jackson is particularly good as a lonely man trying to assuage the grief he still feels from losing his wife. My biggest gripe about the movie -- other than its lack of believability -- is that the "new and improved" Karen is incredibly annoying. It's like she's trying to make up for thirty-seven years of unrestrained hostility by devoting the rest of her life to cooing at babies.

If this movie has a message, it's a decidedly anti-adoption one. Don't give up your child or you might both wind up as miserable misanthropes? Or maybe there is no message at all and it's just a film about adoption from the various perspectives. Although I did quite a bit of eye-rolling during the second half -- almost every time Karen opened her mouth -- overall this movie is still worth seeing.