The complex emotional experience that is bestowed upon every mother was explored in Rodrigo Garcia’s Mother and Child , a film that utilizes the director’s trademark—intertwining storylines—to highlight the struggles and strides of three women grappling with issues of adoption and motherhood.
There is Karen (Annette Bening), an abrasive 50-something year-old woman who lives with her elderly mother, foregoing any real inkling of a social life at the on-set of the film. Karen spends most nights writing letters in her journal, letters to a daughter she had when she was just 14, a daughter she has never met.
That daughter has grown up to be LA-based attorney Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), who seems to have inherited her biological mother’s guarded, remote personality.
Paul (Samuel L. Jackson) is Elizabeth’s new boss, and the two embark on an affair almost (too) instantly. Though he seems genuinely intent on developing the relationship, Elizabeth’s detachment prevents the pair from ever really advancing past pillow talk.
Somewhere across town, there is Lucy (Kerry Washington), a married woman who cannot become pregnant and has accepted adoption as her last hope. Lucy is under the impression that her husband, too, believes adoption is the best option for them, but his tune abruptly changes about a quarter of the way through the film, and one unconvincing argument between the characters later, the two have separated. Lucy is left to adopt and raise a child on her own, and with a combination of movie- magic and fairly realistic circumstances coming together, she eventually does.
Mother and Child is a tension-filled film; Bening truly showcased her character’s sheer inability to cope with her traumatic past on both a daily basis and on a broader scale. The longing she felt for her daughter was never not present, and it added sincerity to what could have otherwise been an overly melodramatic storyline.
Washington’s performance, too, was quite striking. She held nothing back when exploring the devastation Lucy had to tread through to get what she wanted, and the struggle she faced when she finally got it.
Director Garcia is usually quite impressive, but I found this film to be on the cusp of disappointing. A subject matter of this magnitude deserves to be examined in a less structured manner, and though Mother and Child’s main characters provided the story with legitimate substance, in the end the execution could have afforded to be a bit messier.
