It works in the best sense of ensemble acting
Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits, Samuel L. Jackson,
Cherry Jones, Amy Brenneman - how sweet the sound. These hugely talented actors
bring "Mother and Child" to life far beyond the fairly ordinary script that is
its base. All of them use the script merely as a template for the characters
they have imagined for themselves. It works in the best sense of ensemble
acting.
It sounds
simple to say this is a movie about adoption from three different perspectives,
which it is; but Director Rodrigo Garcia has chosen to give us those
perspectives in a series of fragments from the life of each of the three main
characters. No fragment is too long; each advances the story effectively and
each adds a new layer to its main character.
Karen
(Annette Bening) is pregnant at 14 and gives her baby up for adoption. She
thinks about that baby (who must now be 37) every day with deadening remorse. In
her profession as a physical therapist, she can't relate in a confident or
comforting way to her patients. She is curt to the point of rudeness, turning
people away, including newly arrived Paco (Jimmy Smits) with a stunning
harshness. The question that that hangs over her story: will she or won't she
try to find her daughter?
Elizabeth,
the daughter given up for adoption, is bitter and pushes people away in much the
same way as Karen does. She has built her successful legal career on fierce will
and ambition. With no friendships in her life, she eats men alive - for an
evening or a night - and then discards them. She is cold in her serial affairs
and is seldom troubled by the upheavals she causes as she moves on to the next
place, the next time, the next man in her life - all the while wondering why her
mother has never found her.
Lucy (Kerry
Washington) is married to Joseph (David Ramsey), a couple we follow on Lucy's
quest to adopt a baby. In the difficult, often wrenching process of being
interviewed, Joseph is quiet. This is Lucy's search, Lucy's dream. She has the
support of her mother who is also her partner in owning an upscale bakery.
Annette
Bening's Karen is not someone you'd want to meet - until she meets the wonderful
Jimmy Smits who sees behind the crust. Bening brings the huge depth of her own
nature to the role of this heartbreaking mother. Naomi Watts takes enormous
acting risks in creating the witch of every wife's dreams. She takes a decidedly
unpleasant role and makes it wildly more so, ignoring all the ordinary rules of
behavior. Jackson, Smits, Jones and Brenneman give tremendous support to the ice
maidens who make a conventional story into a tale of choices made, consequences
endured, damage wreaked. We are absorbed by a big, generous, group of actors,
all at the top of their games and reaching far to create compelling characters.
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