Karen is a bitter, unhappy spinster coping with the death of her mother and the lifelong feelings of loss and regret over the child she gave up for adoption when she was 14. Elizabeth is the grown up daughter she’s never met, now an ambitious lawyer who has trouble making emotional connections and Lucy is an infertile wife who turns to adoption as the key to the maternity she passionately craves. Rodrigo Garcia skilfully interweaves the rich and complex stories of these three women into a single narrative that runs deep with emotion.
Reviews
Screen
Tim Grierson
"Even if the storytelling wobbles some near the conclusion, Garcia finds the right note to end the movie on – which means returning his attention to his great strength as a filmmaker, his characters."
15/09/2009
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Time Magazine
Mary Pols
"At a crucial moment near the end, Garcia has to manipulate one of his characters dreadfully in order to get all of us —actors, characters, viewers — where he wants us ... It's a credit to Garcia and his actors' impeccable performances that you go along with it even for a minute. Afterward, though, it eats away just a little at your faith in the movie — and at that good cry."
06/05/2010
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Time Out
Cath Clarke
"If Oprah made movies, they might look like this: non-judgemental, the characters all cruising towards be-their-best-selfdom. What keeps the whole thing from toppling into an abyss of unwatchable TV drama histrionics is a pair of dynamite performances from Annette Bening and Naomi Watts."
05/01/2012
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Total Film
James Mottram
"Unfortunately, Mother And Child’s flaws are story-led, the narrative creaking with contrivance and completely falling apart in its final trimester. Attempting a far-tooneatly wrapped finale, García stumbles when he should soar."
23/12/2011
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Empire Magazine
Anna Smith
"Dramatic events are skipped over quickly with little explanation and new characters are introduced without any benefit to the story. It’s beautifully performed — and you don’t get to see Naomi Watts straddling Samuel L. Jackson every day."
02/12/2011
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The Evening Standard
Derek Malcolm
"Garcia's deliberately slow-burning pace makes the film seem much longer than its two hours and an undercurrent of conservatism sometimes betrays his avowedly liberal sentiments. It seems to say that being a mother or a daughter is, in the end, the be all and end all of womanhood. "
06/01/2012
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"The intricate drama of the first hour springs a leak, and schmaltz comes flooding through the hole. Still, cherish those early scenes of Bening as she squashes Smits' friendly overtures, and of Watts maliciously toying with the randy neighbour. Seldom have two damaged women been rendered with such soul-withering fierceness."
06/01/2012
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"Garcia’s script is not as sophisticated as the acting. It’s episodic and rambling, and would have gained from sharper script-editing ... Some of the dialogue is soapy, and the happyish ending depends on contrived coincidences."
05/01/2012
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The New Yorker
Anthony Lane
"While some viewers will lap this up, others will be overwhelmed by the suspicion that they are being taken for a lachrymose ride."
17/05/2010
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The New York Times
A. O. Scott
"This is a relaxed, loose movie that above all is dedicated to exploring the emotions and dilemmas of its characters. Its restraint and the patience of its scenes are arrestingly at odds with the emotional tumult seething just under the surface. When you stop to think about it, some of these women ... live in a state of constant extremity."
06/05/2010
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"The indie movie equivalent of dinner theatre, the sort of low-key melodrama that offers a little artistic nourishment courtesy of a few name stars, but mostly relies on them to buffer an overly schematic story and prevent it from collapsing under the weight of implausibility."
05/01/2012
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"Terribly sincere and sincerely terrible."
05/01/2012
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"Drama of course thrives on calamity and disaster, but this oddly moralising film seems not to tolerate the idea that one woman could give up a child to another for adoption, and that all concerned could live with this arrangement reasonably happily."
05/01/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Nicholas Barber
"It's one of those pseudo-intellectual ensemble dramas with numerous overlapping storylines which think they're profoundly significant just because they don't have a sense of humour.
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08/01/2012
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The Observer
Philip French
"It's a highly contrived affair with a barely concealed, deeply conservative Catholic agenda, and it has the ring of a cracked bell calling the righteous to prayer.
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08/01/2012
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The Times
Wendy Ide
"It’s a decent, if a little heavy-handed, drama for the first two acts. The performances are impressive — humane, sympathetic and flawed. But then Garcia employs some staggeringly suspect narrative devices that drag the picture down ... All this is accompanied by an increasingly hysterical score that makes you wish that every one in question had been a little bit more diligent with their birth control."
06/01/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Tim Robey
"García, goes to such organisational effort that the movie itself resembles protracted labour – it strains through gritted teeth to join its story up, taking some pretty dubious shortcuts in basic credibility."
05/01/2012
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The Sunday Times
Edward Porter
"Garcia seems to think no good can ever come of a mother’s letting a baby be adopted. The fate he arranges for Watts’s character — one that links her to a childless wife (Kerry Washington), desperate to adopt — is a drastic intervention that underlines the film’s preaching with a splash of sacrificial blood.
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08/01/2012
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