Mother and Child

Whether in Crash or Babel, thecrisscrossing intersection of individuals across boundaries of class, race andgeography has become a common plotline in contemporary film. It’s also a themein its own right, posing unanswered questions of synchronicity, fate andchance, and showing how our actions can affect the lives of people unseen.Perhaps this is an unavoidable byproduct of social networking, which promotesthe notion that only three or four degrees separate us from everyone else.

In Mother andChild, parenthood is explored through such a crisscross of people who mightnever meet. The rather off-putting, prickly physical therapist Karen (AnnetteBenning) was 14 when she became pregnant; she gave her child up at birth. Thatbaby grew into Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a coldly ambitious attorney with noknowledge of her biological mother. The affluent African-American couple, Lucy(Kerry Washington) and Joseph (David Ramsey), can’t have children anddesperately seek to adopt a baby. Meanwhile, Elizabeth has simultaneous affairs with twomen, her married neighbor and a partner at her law firm (Samuel L. Jackson),while Karen gradually opens the rusty lock of her heart to a new coworker.

Over the slow moving course of Mother and Child, the lifelines of these people move graduallytoward their inevitable intersection. There are some psychologically andsocially astute moments, especially between Elizabeth and her aged, ailing mother, whosecaring relationship is replete with the silence of so many years and so manyregrets. The terrible sound of a thud in the night will be familiar to anyonewho has cared for elderly parents. Too much of Mother and Child, however, has the slack pace, improbabledevelopments and soft focus of a made-for-TV moviealbeit one with a couple ofexplicit sexual encounters. The cast performs ably in a story that veersunnecessarily toward soap opera.