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Three women seek the parental bond of unconditional love in Mother and Child, a film from Rodrigo Garcia about family in the 21st century.
Mother and Child is centred on Karen (Annette Bening), a middle-aged woman who gave birth at 14 and then gave up her baby for adoption; Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a successful lawyer who seems to have no interest in marriage or children; and Lucy (Kerry Washington), a married woman who hopes to adopt a child with her husband.
As Karen, Bening plays a woman who has spent her entire adult life grieving. The child she gave up when she was 14 has proved to be the most important person in Karen’s life, and she eventually begins the process of trying to find that now-adult daughter. Karen is isolated and prickly, living with her aged mother and rebuffing any advances from any man. Only one man at work (Jimmy Smits) might be able to get past Karen’s difficult exterior. Bening keeps this character’s vulnerability so close to the surface that it’s sometimes difficult to watch her move through the world.
Elizabeth, played by Watts, is a strong, capable working woman with an obsessively controlled emotional life. She’s a workaholic, but not above starting an affair with the boss (Samuel L. Jackson). Or the guy who lives next door. Elizabeth was adopted at birth; her restlessness and abandonment issues are writ large, and maybe too large to be believable.
Finally, there is Washington as Lucy, a young woman hoping to adopt a child with her husband. Notions about family being what they are, Lucy’s husband really wants his own child, not someone else’s, and Lucy must eventually forge ahead without him to get what she wants. There’s many an obstacle for Lucy, and for Karen and Elizabeth, on the road to mother and daughter relationships.
The way the three women’s stories eventually intertwine is unlikely and it sometimes feels manipulative (bring Kleenex), but the performances in Mother And Child are so superb that you may not even notice the machinations of plot. The stellar cast includes Cherry Jones, Eileen Ryan (who is Sean Penn’s mom), Shareeka Epps, David Morse, Amy Brennerman and S. Epatha Merkerson.
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Writer/director Rodrigo Garcia is the son of famed Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so maybe the filmmaker comes by all the magic and coincidence in his stories naturally. His investigation of family and of the mother and daughter bond is intense and emotional; the way the story zigs and zags among various races and ethnicities suggests that Garcia is looking at the larger family of all humans.
Still, he places his characters in a bit of a fairy tale world. You can tell that’s true because of the way most of the men in this story behave: They are devoted, they are good listeners, they are supportive and empathetic, they handle rejection with equanimity and they rarely get angry. They are grown-ups. It’s the ultimate chick-flick fantasy.
It’s also a nifty bit of character creation that makes Mother and Child a film both men and women will enjoy.
(This film is rated 18A)
liz.braun@sunmedia.ca