'Mother And Child' lacking something
Mother And Child (Cert 15, 125 mins, Drama/Romance)
Hard-nosed attorney Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) has no interest in raising a family, having been given away at birth by the biological mother she never knew.
She secures a position at a prestigious firm and begins an affair with married boss Paul (Samuel L Jackson).
Then, unthinkably, she falls pregnant with his child.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s mother Karen (Annette Bening) continues to be haunted by her decision to give away her daughter at the age of 14.
With the support of a new man, Paco (Jimmy Smits), she approaches Sister Joanne (Cherry Jones) at the adoption agency to track down her child.
Elsewhere, talented baker Lucy (Kerry Washington) is desperate to become a mother but she is unable to fall pregnant by her husband, Joseph (David Ramsey). So they contact Sister Joanne to put themselves forward as potential parents to an unwanted child.
Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, Mother And Child is a gently paced ensemble drama, which stitches together the stories of three women who are marked by very different experiences of motherhood.
Bening adopts a similarly icy and neurotic demeanour to her Oscar-nominated matriarch in American Beauty but Garcia’s film has none of the wit or bite of that film, and the script is increasingly contrived.
Washington is likeable but Watts’s ballsy career woman loses our sympathy early on by sleeping with a married neighbour, well aware that she will destroy that relationship through her selfish, cold actions.
Flimsy plot threads are neatly tied together in a bow of sentimentality.
Rating: 3/5.
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