MOTHER AND CHILD
Written & Directed by Rodrigo Garcia
Produced by Lisa Maria Falcone & Julie Lynn
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
USA. 126 min. Rated R
With Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits & Samuel L. Jackson
 

Naomi Watts (21 Grams) mires herself in another multi-pronged, plot-fractured mess in Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child. Why this spectacular actress gravitates to films with narrative delusions of grandeur is unclear, but why such films (Crash, Shrink) fall short of their meteoric heyday (Magnolia, Short Cuts) is absolutely inscrutable and depressing.

Here the zigzagging storylines aren’t confusing or unlikely—all simply focus on women and motherhood. The problem is the unflinching sincerity and shameless overload of pathos. Luckily, the most dejected character is aptly played by Annette Bening, who brings to life Karen, a biting, unmarried woman whose forced abandonment of a child she had as a teenager has set a miserable, unrequited tone for the rest of her life. She works as a nurse and lives with her mother, spending her days fantasizing about her daughter, and repelling strangers with her vinegary personality. Meanwhile, her daughter, Elizabeth (Watts), has grown into a hardheaded lawyer who dates like a man and lives like a hermit. Communicating mostly through sultry glances and film-noirish one-liners, Elizabeth provides some much needed, though often unintended, comic relief. When her no-bullshit attitude rubs up against a pair of affectedly polite neighbors (all insincere “how are you’s” and sugary smiles), Elizabeth responds by taunting and sabotaging their wholesome little lives. Even if a tad too cruel, this stance on forced social niceties is an amusing high point of the film.

Meanwhile, Lucy (Kerry Washington), a beautiful, bubbly young woman who has failed to conceive with her husband, desperately tries to adopt. The monotone drama of her storyline runs parallel to Karen and Elizabeth’s until a shamefully unsurprising tie-in at the very end lessens our already flaccid curiosity as to how it all comes together.

Mother and Child isn’t so much a film about motherhood as a sampling of female failure, misery, and disappointment. Pushing a character to a psychological brink by wrenching a baby out of her teenage hands can’t be the best way to survey the archetypal mother/daughter relationship. A greater emphasis on humor and nuance may have saved a film so replete with great actors. Instead, it shoots for great universal insight and falls somewhere short of a Lifetime miniseries. Yana Litovsky
May 7, 2010