When giving birth is not possible, can a woman find genuine fulfillment by adopting? Mother and Child, an emotional drama about women’s lives and legacies, centers on adoption.
Love between a mother and her child is ever-changing, a circle of love and resentment, dependence and independence, respect and scorn. Courage is needed to weave oneself into humanity's fabric.
Naomi Watts and Samuel L. Jackson were nominated for Spirit Awards for their roles here.
With a stellar ensemble cast, Mother and Child is redeemed somewhat from a Crash-inspired screenplay filled with too many coincidences and tearjerker scenes. Rodrigo Garcia (Six Feet Under; The Sopranos; Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her) directs.
As 50-year-old Karen, Annette Bening plays a tight-lipped ice queen filled with pain and distrust. She is caring as a physical therapist, but quickly turns prickly when Paco (Jimmy Smits), another therapist, dares to approach her with a friendly word.
At home Karen is a competent caregiver to her dying mother Nora (Eileen Ryan), but there’s little warmth between them. Nora is fond of their cleaning woman Sofia (Elpidia Carrillo) and her cute young daughter Cristi (Simone Lopez). Karen is extremely uncomfortable around Cristi, and can’t stand that her mother confides more in the hired help than in her own daughter.
Karen’s biggest regret is that at age 14, she gave up her own daughter for adoption at her mother’s insistence. Bitterness eats away at her. Unmarried Karen obsesses about the daughter she never knew. She writes letters to her and looks for her face in every crowd. Karen is sure she would recognize her daughter immediately.
How Bening develops her character by the film’s end is engrossing. Miraculously, Paco hangs around and is the one person Karen turns to after her mother dies. When he urges Karen to seek out her adult daughter, she is skeptical at first.
Karen’s daughter turns out to be Elizabeth (Watts), a sleek and conniving young attorney joining a new firm. She tells the firm’s widowed partner Paul (Jackson) that she is adopted, prefers to work alone and wants to report to a man. Watts develops Elizabeth as a ruthless personality with some real humanity hidden within.
When Elizabeth discovers that she is pregnant, she moves away, wanting to savor the experience and become a mother on her own terms. Amy Brenneman appears briefly as Elizabeth’s doctor.
Elizabeth’s friendship with a blind girl (Brittany Robertson) at her new apartment building provides a beautiful prelude to giving birth. It is Violet who senses and loves Elizabeth for who she really is.
Lucy (Kerry Washington) ardently seeks motherhood although she and her husband Joseph (David Ramsey) have not been able to conceive. Making her case before Sister Joanne (Cherry Jones) at the adoption agency, she declares that they will love an adopted child just as much as they would their own. Joseph clings to the dream of fathering his own child.
When Lucy finally does bring a baby home, she soon becomes overwhelmed. S. Epatha Merkerson savors her character Ada, an opinionated new grandmother with a heart of gold.
Shareeka Epps gives a complex, arresting performance as Ray, an angry young pregnant woman with very specific standards for her baby’s adoptive mother. Ray’s relationship with Lucy is a sensitive balancing act from start to finish.
The women characters of Mother and Child are more well-realized than its men, although Jackson, Smits and Ramsey make their mark. David Morse also appears.
Catholic nuns suggest the sanctity of motherhood, serving as gatekeepers who shepherd mothers and adoptees.
If you like Mother and Child, you might enjoy: Rabbit Hole; The Other Woman; The Kids Are All Right.
Mother and Child 2009 / R / 2 hours, 7 min
Cast Overview: Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits, Shareeka Epps, Eileen Ryan, Cherry Jones, S. Epatha Merkerson, Samuel L. Jackson, David Ramsey, Elpidia Carrillo, David Morse
Director: Rodrigo Garcia
Genres: Drama, Romance
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