Mother and Child Review
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
, Posted by Should I See It at 7:50 PM
Film: Mother and Child
Director: Rodrigo Garcia
Starring: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington and Jimmy Smits.
Plot: Tells the intersecting stories of three women: Karen, who gave up her baby at age fourteen, Elizabeth, a career woman dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, and Lucy, who is struggling to adopt.
You just don’t see enough nuns in movies any more. Apart from Sister Act and The Sound of Music, nuns are seriously underrepresented in films. Mother and Child has a very nice nun: Sister Joanne played by Cherry Jones, is very sweet, and definitely not a scary nun from those old Catholic schools that you hear about. I single out Sister Joanne because she was my favourite character in the film.
Mother and Child is essentially a melodrama. The presence of the nun probably has already alerted you to that. Several other plot points emphasise the failure of original storytelling, culminating in a series of coincidences that kick the resolution into gear (that Dickens, king of the coincidence would have loved) order on the improbable. The dialogue is horribly stilted, especially from Watts. Her opening scenes are particularly painful.
It is interesting that all the mothers represented in the film are single mothers. I spent a lot of time wondering about what this film says about the state of the female, and the state of modern marriage. The women of Mother and Child are defined by motherhood, or rather the lack of it. I think that the film intends for motherhood to be empowering, but as the characters spend most of their time miserable, I can’t help but think the intention of the film is misguided.
Annette Bening plays a woman, Karen, who at fourteen got pregnant and gave her baby up for adoption. As a consequence she is unable to mature beyond the age fourteen. Seriously. She spends most of the film as a moody teenager, thinking the world is conspiring against her. Giving up her baby at fourteen has defined her life, bordering on the point of obsession.So much so that she is unable to move forward. The baby of long ago threatens her realtionship with her dying mother and everyone around her.
Naomi Watts (Elizabeth) who is the hard working, nomadic career woman, actually turns out to be the daughter that Annette Bening gave up! Really? Are we surprised? Indeed, having her tubes tied at age seventeen means she (like her mother) cannot mature beyond that age! Elizabeth’s outright rejection of her ‘role’ as a woman (her career drive, having her tubes tied, seducing another woman’s husband, I could go on and on about her ….indiscretions….) means the film cannot sustain her in her entry into mother hood, and thus she dies.
Lucy (played by Kerry Washington) can’t conceive, yet is so blinded by her desire for a baby she can’t see that her marriage is falling apart.
And don’t even get me started on Ray the college student who got herself knocked up and is planning to give her baby to Lucy to adopt. Her attitude towards the potential parents of her child is irritating. Yet even Ray, who was raised by a single mother, cannot resist the 'transformative' power of motherhood, and eventually decides against giving Lucy her baby.
Does Mother and Child do a disservice to women? For the film seems to imply that women are only connected to their children, and thus can only be define by their children. The men in the film do not seem to have the same connection to their children as the women do.
But what does it say about director Rodrigo Garcia? Writing and directing film about women who are completely and utterly defined in their roles as mothers? Can he, as a man, accurately depict the complicated nature of motherhood? Or is he spreading his own ideal, shared by other men, of how women should be?
Mother and Child could have been a wonderful film, but it so one-note, unrealistic and the characters so unlikable, the film fails to fully capture the reality of motherhood.
Should I See It?
No. Mother and Child does not come highly recommended.
Mother and Child Official Site here.
Fantastic review to read early in the morning and I really enjoyed by reading your review because it is what I want to read and stay blessed