Mother and Child

The sensitive touch of Rodrigo García—a talented HBO house director (In Treatment, Carnivàle) with an extremely spotty feature career (Nine Lives, Passengers) - keeps this gimmicky ensemble melodrama out of the bullshit-detector red zone. As in most of his films, women take center stage: Middle-aged health-care worker Karen (Bening) is the biological mother of icy power attorney Elizabeth (Watts), whom she gave up for adoption immediately after birth. In a seemingly unrelated thread, the slightly manic baker Lucy (Washington) prepares to adopt a child of her own, since she’s been unable to conceive. All three live in Los Angeles, but none of them have ever met. Uh-oh.

Much as Nine Lives hinged on an aesthetic stunt (each sequence was filmed in a single shot), Mother and Child borrows the “we’re-all-connected” converging narrative patented by executive producer Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel). It remains an annoying, faux-profound structural tic—at this point, there are no more returns to diminish - though this doesn’t negate the stellar performances García gets from his central female trio.

Watts is the most immediately attention-grabbing, with the story dictating that Elizabeth move from legal-eagle whore of Babylon (a terrific Samuel L. Jackson plays her willing prey) to martyred, maternal saint. A believably unbalanced Bening scores the movie’s true coup: Karen’s revitalizing relationship with a sweetly persistent coworker (Jimmy Smits) is a rare example of Hollywood doing right by midlife romance. And Washington, because she’s the least caught up in the twisted-pretzel plotting, gives Lucy’s every gesture the hallmark of truth. Everything else, sad to say, is just Hallmark. Keith Uhlich