BONDAGE TO DESTRUCTIVE MYTHS IN "MOTHER AND CHILD"

I don't usually blog about movies I loathe, since I prefer to focus on getting the word out on films I WANT people to see--but I've gotten some requests for comment about "Mother and Child" (1) so here's my take. I warn you, it will be a rant, and it will contain spoilers.

This film is the worst kind of offensive crap. It peddles every negative stereotype about adoption and motherhood that you can imagine and, though the writer/director Rodrigo Garcia (whose work I have admired elsewhere) seems to believe that he is glorifying women, none of the women here are believable or even remotely likeable. Garcia seems totally oblivious to the messages embedded in his story--among them, essentially, that a woman should never plan an adoption (or, in the language of the film, "give her child up" for adoption) because she will be haunted for the rest of her life, "her" child will be desperately unhappy and feel abandoned, and the severed bond will have nothing but bad ripples for the rest of both of their lives. Adoptive parents are never mentioned, except in a disparaging way, and the one birthparent planning an adoption in the film is depicted as mean and wielding god-like power--and, of course, as deciding not to go through with the adoption at the last minute.

Before I go on, I want to make clear that my reaction to the film is not just based on the political messages that I think it sends. My overall objection is that it displays absolutely zero insight into how human beings work. None of the characters are believable; their transformations are hackneyed, their motivations merely convenient to the plot. The fact that this kind of thing frequently gets described as moving and insightful, frankly, drives me insane.

The plot revolves around three women: Karen (Annette Bening), whose pregnancy at age 14 ended in a closed adoption that has left her bitter and still living with her elderly mother at age 51; Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), Karen's 37-year-old birth daughter (always referred to as Karen's daughter), who is a cold-hearted careerist whose unwillingness to commit or make any real human connections obviously stems from the fact that her "mother gave her up"; and infertile Lucy (Kerry Washington), who is planning to adopt the child of a bitter and unmarried 20-year-old college student, Ray. As the plot unfolds, the film hammers home that all of Karen's and Elizabeth's respective unhappiness and inability to connect stems from the fact that their bond was so unwisely severed. The film very clearly implies that everyone would have been better off if Karen's own mother had not "made" her plan Elizabeth's adoption--a highly questionable assumption given Karen's age at Elizabeth's birth and the utter lack of warmth in Karen's relationship with her own mother, but whatever. Whenever anyone asks Elizabeth about her mother, she skips right over the mother who raised her from birth (or, at most, merely notes that their relationship was "difficult") and goes right to the disclosure that her mother gave her up for adoption. Meanwhile, we can tell from the beginning (telegraphed by none-too-subtle dialogue about how unthinkable it is that one could love "someone else's" child and how "unnatural" adoption is) that Lucy's marriage is headed for the rocks because she can't "give" her husband a biological child and, of course, that the adoption she is planning will be disrupted.

The motivations of the men in this film are especially inexplicable. Karen is a self-described "difficult" woman (the adoption, remember) who has never loved anyone since the kid who knocked her up at 14. Naturally, she hates her housekeeper's adorable school-age daughter and bites the head off her handsome, kindly co-worker, Paco (Jimmy Smits!), every time he tries even to engage her in polite conversation--but, for no reason at all, he sticks with it, and soon she finds herself disclosing to him that her whole life boils down to the adoption she regrets as he nods sagely and takes her hand. The next thing we know they are married and Karen is turning into a nice person who sees the same school-age child of her employee sleeping and falls in love with her. Though Karen doesn't believe in God (none of the three lead women do, as they are all happy to say) she is only too happy to accept advice in the form of a platitude-filled speech from Paco's annoying adult daughter about God, motherhood, and why Karen must immediately locate the daughter she gave up. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, who is supposed to be smart and is most definitely hot, tells her much older widower boss (Samuel L. Jackson) when he hires her that she prefers to report to men, noting that women don't like her because she "isn't part of the sisterhood." But within a month of work, she beds him, ordering him to "lie still, old man" while she has her way with him. Of course, he is quite taken with her and, when he finds out that she is pregnant months after she has dumped him, tells her that, though he was planning to drop his law practice and move across the country with a woman he met three months ago, he would dump her to stay with Elizabeth instead if she'll accept him. Sheesh.

Sorry about the spoilers (there are a few zingers left in the plot which you may even be able to predict from what I've told you)--but not really, because no one should see this film. If you want to see a really good film about adoption, try "Secrets and Lies," Mike Leigh's miraculous film about a woman who locates her biological mother after her adoptive parents die and forges a complicated and funny and believable relationship with her that doesn't in the least denigrate the meaning of her relationship with the parents who raised her. Perhaps someday we will see more films involving adoption that don't peddle the same, tired destructive myths we so frequently see. For that matter, perhaps some day we will see more films about career women who are actually smart and accomplished and not just heartless ball-busters, and adoptive mothers who are not so prone to hysteria and self-pity, and adoptive fathers who actually love their wives and stick around for their children. There are actually interesting stories to tell about such people, after all. I can dream, can't I?