Review: "Mother and Child" Honest and Real

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 25 (of 2011) by Leroy Douresseaux

Mother and Child (2009/2010)
Running time: 127 minutes (2 hour, 7 minutes)
MPAA – R for sexuality, brief nudity, and language
WRITER/DIRECTOR: Rodrigo García
PRODUCERS: Lisa Maria Falcone and Julie Lynn
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Xavier Pérez Grobet (D.o.P.)
EDITOR: Steven Weisberg
Image Award winner

DRAMA

Starring: Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits, Samuel L. Jackson, S. Epatha Merkerson, Cherry Jones, Elpidia Carrillo, Shareeka Epps, David Morse, Eileen Ryan, Amy Brenneman, and David Ramsey

Mother and Child is an ensemble drama film released in 2010, after premiering at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Focusing on the complications and complexities of motherhood and adoption, the film is poignant, powerful, and even beautiful. It is also sometimes grueling to watch.

Mother and Child opens almost 40 years earlier on a scene in which a 14-year-old girl prepares to have sex with a teen boy. She gets pregnant and later gives up her baby for adoption. 37 years later, we learn that the baby is Elizabeth Joyce (Naomi Watts), a high-powered attorney returning to Los Angeles, the place of her birth. Elizabeth takes a job at a law firm owned by a man named Paul (Samuel L. Jackson). Elizabeth begins an affair with Paul, but this is but one affair of many for a woman who uses her sex appeal to have the upper hand in situations in which she does not have control.

Meanwhile, her birth mother, Karen (Annette Bening), is a 50-something physical therapist still riddled by the guilt of giving up her baby. Although initially resistant, she begins a relationship with Paco (Jimmy Smits), a co-worker who seems to be therapeutic for Karen. At the same time, a small businesswoman, Lucy (Kerry Washington), and her husband, Joseph (David Ramsey), begin the process of adoption. However, the birthmother, a difficult young woman named Ray (Shareeka Epps), interrogates Lucy and seems hostile to Joseph.

Top to bottom, Mother and Child is filled with splendid acting, and there isn’t an actor, regardless of the size of his or her part, who does not deliver the kind of first-class performance that a professional actor should always give. Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Sam Jackson, and Shareeka Epps give distinctive performances that add both surprising nuance to a film that rages with dark emotions and strong feelings (particularly anger, bitterness, and regret).

Writer and director Rodrigo García composed a sumptuous screenplay rich with characters and vivid characterizations. It is Garcia’s directing, however, that is the star here, as he gives his actors the space they need to develop these characters and to deliver on the characters’ promise without slowing the film.

Still, there are moments in Mother and Child that feel contrived and overwrought, as if Garcia doesn’t trust his cast to deliver or his audience to understand his film, which is as spiritual as it is dramatic. Garcia captures how vulnerable people are when they open themselves to relationships, and he accurately depicts the bitterness people feel over perceived betrayals. Sometimes the raw emotions are too much to bear (or watch). As good as this film is, and Mother and Child is exceptionally good, I sometimes got a feeling or a notion that things were a little overdone. But don’t let that keep you from seeing one of 2010’s very best films.

8 of 10
A

NOTES:
2011 Black Reel Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Supporting Actor” (Samuel L. Jackson) and “Best Supporting Actress” (Shareeka Epps)

2011 Image Awards: 1 win: “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture” (Samuel L. Jackson); 2 nominations: “Outstanding Independent Motion Picture” and “Outstanding Writing in a Motion Picture-Theatrical or Television” (Rodrigo García)

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Strong Acting Helps "Half Nelson" Overcome Half-Ass Directing (Happy B'day, Anthony Mackie)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 38 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

Half Nelson (2006)
Running time: 107 minutes (1 hour, 47 minutes)
MPAA – R for drug content throughout, language, and some sexuality
DIRECTOR: Ryan Fleck
WRITERS: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
PRODUCERS: Anna Boden, Lynette Howell, Rosanne Korenberg, Alex Orlovsky, and Jamie Patricof
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Andrij Parekh
EDITOR: Anna Boden
2007 Academy Award nominee

DRAMA

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps, Anthony Mackie, Monique Curnen, Deborah Rush, and Jay O. Sanders

In the independent film drama, Half Nelson, an inner-city schoolteacher and one of his students form an unlikely friendship that just might help him pull it together and stop her from following her brother into prison.

Dan Dunne (Ryan Gosling) is anxious to help his students learn outside the parameters of what is accepted in public schools, but each day that he’s in front of his class, it is clear that his mind is elsewhere. Dunne is a frustrated novelist and a drug addict who knows he’s in trouble but won’t stop using illegal drugs. Drey (Shareeka Epps) lives in a small apartment with her divorced mom, and her father chooses to live outside of her life. Her brother is doing a stint in prison, apparently for his dealings with Frank (Anthony Mackie), the neighborhood drug dealer. Now, Frank is trying to recruit Drey into his service. As Dunne spirals downward, he is surprised to find Drey acting as his conscience, when he plans on being hers.

Co-writer/director Ryan Fleck and co-writer Anna Boden are so intent on not offering easy answers and pat resolutions in their film, Half Nelson, that they almost ruin it. They’ve made an underwritten, slice-of-life movie. Instead of giving Half Nelson a beginning, middle, and ending, they instead act as if they’re making a docu-drama and are presenting just the facts – thank you very much and can’t (and perhaps shouldn’t) make judgments.

Luckily, at the heart of their film sit two outstanding acting performances. First, Ryan Gosling, who seems to be on the cusp of greatness (or is at least still a simmering “next big thing”), delivers a sharp and heartrending performance as a druggie teacher that is as harrowing as it is quiet and graceful. Gosling doesn’t glamorize drug addiction, nor does he play teacher Dan Dunne as some kind of trashy lowlife always dressed in filthy rags. Dunne is woefully in denial and, therefore, helpless against his addiction. We can feel sorry for him, while simultaneously being tired of his self-destructive ways.

Meanwhile, Shareeka Epps as the inner city, almost-lost girl Drey offers a stout and stoic face to the world. It’s as if Epps realizes that the only way that Drey survives her life of sorrow and loneliness is to keep a stiff upper lip, so Drey offers a facial expression that might make Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry blink. Still, Epps allows us to see underneath to the vulnerable girl who isn’t so sure that she isn’t destined to end up an incarcerated drug dealer like her brother.

Anthony Mackie, as the neighborhood drug kingpin, also offers Half Nelson a fine performance. Mackie’s Frank is a sly salesman who wears his dishonesty and predatory ways on his sleeve as if they were banners of personal pride. Mackie makes Frank dangerous without grandstanding or scene stealing, which is what most actors do when they play drug lords and dealers.

What Gosling, Epps, and Mackie offer is substance to Fleck and Boden’s faux and cheapie realism. They make Half Nelson a standout film when it could have been just another pretentious, underwritten independent drama.

7 of 10
A-

NOTES:
2007 Academy Awards: 1 nomination for “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role” (Ryan Gosling)

2007 Black Reel Awards: 2 nominations: “Best Breakthrough Performance” (Shareeka Epps) and “Best Supporting Actress” (Shareeka Epps)

Sunday, February 18, 2007