The Movie: Mother and Child packs a wallop

With the release of two excellent adoption-themed films, Casa de los Babies (2003) and Loggerheads (2005), I thought Hollywood had finally come to understand adoption loss. No more schmaltzy stories with birthmothers as misty-eyed heroines (e.g. To Each His Own, 1946 and Three Secrets, 1951). My hopes were dashed by two dreadful films released in 2007, Juno and Then She Found Me. No longer a self-sacrificing martyr, the birthmother was now a wise-cracking teenager or a manipulative liar.

So it was with some trepidation that I went to see Mother and Child, a new film written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia. This film is all that I hoped for and more. It chips away at adoption myths, telling the truth about forced separations of mother and child.

The film opens in 1973 with 14 year old Karen unbuttoning her blouse while her boy friend watches, eager for what is to come. Next we see a very pregnant Karen in a room with other pregnant girls followed by a screaming Karen giving birth. Fast forward to 2010 and the adult Karen (Annette Bening) tells her mother, “she would be 37 today”.

The scene shifts to Elizabeth, Karen’s daughter, (Naomi Watts), an attorney interviewing for a job. We learn that Karen has moved from place to place, never committing herself to anything. Finally we meet Lucy (Kerry Washington) and her husband. Lucy explains to a social worker nun that they have accepted adoption because Lucy has not been able to conceive. Her husband nods in agreement with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm

The three women struggle with loss. Karen is tense, bitter, and distrustful, striking out at those seeking to help her. Elizabeth, unable to connect with anyone or any place, uses sex to assert herself and control others. Lucy works to convince herself and her husband that an adopted child can replace the child they cannot have biologically. The stories of the three women move separately until they intersect dramatically at the end of the film

Other women fill in the tableau, displaying the many facets of mother-daughter relationships -- Karen’s mother who cannot accept her responsibility for Karen’s loss of her child; Lucy’s mother, encouraging her daughter but unsure about having an adopted grandchild; a pregnant woman planning to give up a child; her mother, facing the loss of a grandchild; the social worker nun, moving infants from one woman to another; and a single mother, employed as a housekeeper who brings her daughter to work with her when other care is unavailable.

Although adoption connects all the characters, Garcia said in an interview with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, that he considers the film to be about forced separation, not adoption. He learned about the loss inherent in adoption loss by reading memoirs of young girls forced to hide their pregnancies and give up their babies. (The interview itself is well worth hearing.)

The film has some fine acting, particularly by Annette Bening and Samuel L. Jackson who plays Elizabeth’s boss and lover. The cast also includes one of my favorite actors, Law and Order’s S. Epatha Merkerson as Lucy’s mother.

There are some flaws -- Elizabeth’s behavior is unconvincing, some plot twists seem contrived, there is way too much graphic sex -- but they do not mar the truth and power of the film.
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PS: A piece of news today: "Adopted," the movie  (80-minute feature documentary) is now from Netflix!
Documentary only. Educational DVD for professionals and parents that includes 6 distinct sessions with advice from leading experts in the field of adoption not included. I've been anxious to see this and am glad I'll be able to. Here's the trailer:

Life Unexpected Is All Too Real

CW's Life Unexpected hit it out of the ballpark with reality last night. First, there was an emotional scene in which the always-abandoned-but-never-adopted Lux angrily tells her mother, Cate, that she is hurt and angry because she, Cate, never checked up on her when she was two and three, and in the hospital without anyone to visit her...."You gave me up like I didn't even matter to you because I didn't," she angrily yells at Cate.

Right! I was thinking, no matter the story told to adoptees, somewhere is this huge mountain of rejection and abandonment they have to get over, if they can. I mostly doubt it is possible.

"I thought I was doing what was right for you..."Cate responds, adding that at the time she was
sixteen herself, with a mother who was drinking herself into her next divorce and a father whose whereabouts she did not know, and had no one to turn to herself at the time--including Lux's father, Baze, who did not even know he was a father. I do wish that Cate had said that once you sign those surrender papers, the state sees you as gone for good. For god-knows-what-reasons, the state--or any agency I have ever heard of--does not follow up and tell you that your child needs help, or was never adopted, all of which so many of us so fervently wish had happened. We have heard many stories of trouble that came later and first/birth mothers who should have been contacted, but the state never does that. Instead, children are shuttled from one foster home to another--or shipped off to boarding school if the adoptive family can afford that--and no one ever thinks, Gee, maybe the mother is in a different place and can step up now and offer this child what he needs.

In my own case, even when my daughter's doctor was writing to the agency for medical information, and I was writing to the agency offering it (about the birth control pills I took during the first trimester), the agency sat on the letters. I got one telling me she was happy with her new family, and I should get on with my life; her doctor's letter went unanswered, though we know the agency received it.

Back to the story: Things continue to go badly between the angry Lux and Cate, daughter and mother. Lux will not forgive her for not taking in one of her foster-care friends; but in the end, the three (Cate, Baze and Lux) decide that they do not wish to jeopardize the arrangement that they have now: that Cate and Baze share joint custody as foster parents. They try to present a united happy front to the social worker, who can have Lux removed and sent to another foster home, but the social worker sees through the facade.

That's when the script got awfully real and the line above is said in hurt and anger. However, the social worker says, Aha! reality here, not maybe you can work this out as a family. As the story progresses, Lux does want to come back to live with Cate (she had been temporarily living with Baze, above the bar he owns, and staying with her boyfriend, who is not exactly college material, or even high school, for that matter). And back at Cate's house, here's where Lux says:

"I can't promise that this is going to work out. Or that I won't get upset and I'll want to take it out on you. I know I seem like I'm okay but I'm more messed up inside than you realize. The truth is, I don't forgive you. I don't know if I'm ever going to forgive you."

Wow, I was thinking. That was my daughter speaking to me, no matter how many years went by. She never really forgave me.
Cate responds:

"Lux, you don't have to. You don't ever have to forgive me. I'm never going to be able to forgive me. I just want a chance with you. What do I have to do to make it right?"

Lux: "Let me come home."

Pass the hanky, I'm tearing up writing this.

What was I reminded of? The day my sixteen-year-old daughter--the daughter I gave up for adoption shortly after birth--and I decided to play act how she felt about...being adopted. She was guiding the action and we two characters ended up in a cemetery looking at some ancestor's grave, which is where my daughter moved the plot line. Ancestor's grave. Her ancestor, and mine--just like in Who Do You Think You Are? And my daughter turns to me and says: Why did you give me up? And a minute later, she's got her hands around my neck shaking me, saying: Why did you give me up?

Does anyone ever truly forgive her birth/first mother for being given up? I don't know. I have heard so few stories about reunions that do not go south that I sometimes wonder if real forgiveness, in your ordinary, run-of-the-mill surrender and reunion, is ever possible.--lorraine
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You can watch whole episodes at the website of Life Unexpected. I love this show and hope it plays for several seasons. It is the baby of Liz Tigelaar, who was adopted herself. We previously wrote about Life Unexpected here and here. Personally, it's one of the best things I've ever seen about the issues adoptees face on television. Even though the main character, Lux, was never officially adopted. Well, now she just might be....