ScreenWize

Opening with sensitivity and a carefully managed emphasis on the relationships between mothers and daughters, Rodrigo Garcia (who has already demonstrated his skill in making films for women with Nine Lives and Things You Can Tell By Just Looking At Her) explores motherhood, adoption and loss. Yet despite some wonderful performances, its hard not to feel manipulated as the story moves into its overly contrived and sentimental last act.

Like his previous films, Garcia works here with multiple storylines, introducing us to highly-strung Karen (Annette Benning) who lives with her aging mother Nora. Now in her fifties, Karen is distrustful and increasingly bitter about the baby girl she had to adopt out when she was fourteen, and takes her feelings out on her co-workers who include a patient admirer Paco (Jimmy Smits). The child Karen never saw is now Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a successful and ruthless lawyer who uses others for her own pleasure, including her boss Paul (Samuel L. Jackson). Moving towns and jobs, Elizabeth now finds herself in the same town as her birth mother, but has closed off any possibility of meeting her. In the third key storyline, Lucy (Kerry Washington) is planning to adopt the baby of pregnant teen Ray (Shareeka Epps). Behind the scenes, the mothers of both Lucy and Ray try their best to guide their anguished daughters through the highly-charged process.

None of the journeys of these various women seems like its going to be easy, and Garcia carefully steers us through the pain and tears, steadily drawing the stories together through the actions of Sister Joanne, a nun involved in all the adoptions past and present. It’s a genuine and heartfelt attempt to investigate the complexities that come with adoption, and to examine the impact it has on relationships.

Watts, Benning and Washington all create complex and deeply sympathetic characters – Watts and Benning as women lost to the world that families should be, and Washington taking us on a roller-coaster ride of emotion which she handles with extreme care. But even the great skills of these three can’t hide the manufactured character transformations that Garcia forces upon us – along with some dreadful plot contrivances - to bring about an emotionally convenient and manipulated conclusion.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon