A Mixed Bag of Adoption Extremes with a Hollywood Ending

Hollywood  tries it hands at an Adoption movie again in this film by Rodrigo Garcia due to open May 7th.

Critics Rave for Performances by Adoption Triad

Shown already at both the  Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance, “movie” reviews hail the performances of the main characters played by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, and Kerri Washington as both Oscar Worthy and also sang praises for Garica who was both writer and director.

I, however, do not pretend to be a true film critic, but rather look upon anything adoption related for it’s true views and media portrayals of adoption. It was with my “adoption eyes” that I viewed the Screening of “Mother and Child” at the Sony Private screening room in NYC this past Monday evening.

Not Another Typical Hollywood Birthmother

We are first introduced to Karen played Annette Bening. The first scene shows her, at 14, daring to love a boy, then sitting among many pregnant teens in maternity home and then, painfully giving birth. The year is about 1973  and the snapshot images of the unwed mother’s experience is frighteningly true to what many other mother’s describe all too clearly in both Baby Scoop Era blogs and The Girl’s That Went Away. I worry that I did not bring tissues.

Bening, who I have always admired as an actress, seems to understanding some of the finer nuances to life as a birthmother. We are brought back up to the present day where she cares for her invalid, aging mother and the left over tension from things left unsaid is clearly felt in their interactions.

“It’s going to be her birthday soon”, Bening brings up with a hopeful sound in her voice.

Her mother ignores her completely.

Quickly, I can see that she has not “moved on’ from her experience, but continues to be haunted. In fact, in many ways she has frozen to that time when she relinquished; waking up from the often reoccurring nightmare of birth and quickly going to her own mothers bed, like the child she probably still is in many ways. Still, the anger is there in Bening and the avoidance is there in her mother.

As Karen, Bening is emotional shut off. She is going through the motions of life; working as a physical therapist, caring for her mother, but it’s obvious that she derives no enjoyment from anything at all. She is stiff and cold with co-workers, her mother’s caretaker/housecleaner, Maria, and clearly resents/ fears Maria’s young daughter as many birthmother’s also report wanting to avoid all other children and the pain that they bring up.

When her mother dies suddenly, it becomes even more obvious how far apart the adoption rift has caused them. Maria tries to tell Bening that her mother was a good woman and Bening is shocked that the housekeeper is obviously closer to her own mother than she is. Desperately, she asks what did her mother say about her, and when Maria tells her that her mother took responsibility for ruining Bening’s life and had made a terrible mistake by forcing her to give up her child, Bening  breaks down and sobs in a most realistic way.

“I needed for HER to say that!” and indeed, the betrayals of our own families during pregnancy, relinquishment, and the ongoing grief is very difficult to both mitigate through and find true forgiveness from. Waiting for the acknowledgment for 37 years and then losing the chance to ever get it, Bening’s response is pretty true to life.

Overall, I really appreciated how Annett Bening played a birthmother. Difficult, broken, stuck in the past ( constantly writing to her daughter in letters never mailed), cold, removed and knowing that she had nothing left, I think it was an accurate portrayal of a mother in that situation. A chunkier, graying  Jimmy Smits plays her co-worker who is trying to get her eye and you can see that not only does she not know how to interact with him, but she doesn’t know what to do with him at all. However, he persists and upon finally picking her up for a date, she explains what she is about:

” When I was 14, I had a baby and gave her up for adoption, I think about her all the time. I dream about her.  I buy presents that she will never see. I write letters that will never get mailed. I have nothing else”

Somehow, Bening was able to get it and show it well.

Naomi Watts Gives Us an Adoptee Nightmare

Watts plays Elizabeth, Bening’s daughter, now 37. To create this character someone must have read The Primal Wound and took every adoptee issue and wrapped it up into one scary package.

We met her upon a job interview with Samuel L Jackson and she describes upon his request her personal life:

‘My mother was 14 and gave me up at birth. My adopted father died when I was ten. My adoptive mother and I are not close. I left home at 17 and have been on my own ever since. I am not married or have children nor do I have plans to do either”.

She is frighteningly sexual aggressive, cold, calculating workaholic. She runs away from any situation before she can get hurt. She uses her sexuality to control those around her. She is adoptee trust issues personified. She seems to have no real connection to other people, unless she is in bed with them, and even then it’s a stretch, and no connection to her own issues or the adoption at all. Of course, she shows no sign of waiting to search for her roots even though there is no sign of any adoptee loyalty to her adoptive family either. Bonding, closeness, family, connection all seem to freak her completely out, yet she keeps returning to Los Angles, the city of her birth, and doesn’t seem to question why.

Elizabeth is full of extremes, however, and upon finding out that she is pregnant ( though not knowing of it is her boss Jackson’s child or her married neighbor’s), she quickly goes from ” I can’t be; I had my tubes tied when I was 17″ to cursing out the Gyn-Ob who assumed that she would want an abortion. Determined to keep this baby, she runs away from her job, Jackson who is scared of getting attached and hurt by her coldness, and her life.  Now softer, as her belly grows, she strikes up a friendship with Violet her blind 14 year old neighbor who asks probing questions.  When Violet inquires if she was angry upon being given up for adoption, Elizabeth answers “All that anger washed out of me”.

Violet suggests that she should search for her birthmother and sure enough, Elizabeth writes the letter that will go into her adoption file.

While it IS typical for many adoptees to re-examine their feelings of their own births during pregnancy, the 180 degree flip that Elizabeth experiences is almost hard to believe. It’s just a tad too much change in my opinion and too quick, however I think even the unseasoned viewer can see that adoption has somehow effected Elizabeth quite negatively.

The Entitled Prospective Adoptive Mother, Lucy

I found Lucy, played by Kerry Washington, hard to like, not because she was playing the adoptive mother, but because she was sooooo almost predatory in her quite selfish portrayal. I should have like the movie for showing that side of adoption, but I don’t know if it would come across sympathetic or not?

In the segments of Lucy’s story, there are nice attempts to represent some adoption stereotypes especially in her interactions with her own mother who blurts out things lifted from  the “What not to say to adoptive parents” handbook. Lucy prattles in feel good sound bites like ” It’s the  time spent together that counts” or something to the Nun at the Catholic Adoption agency (surprise.. the same nun who was there for Bening!).

We get a little wonky when, her husband leaves the 4 year old marriage mid-adoption because he really wanted a child of his “own” and she continues on with the same perspective birthmother at the same Catholic agency and it all seems ok. I would like to think that a pending divorce might cause any agency to at least have Lucy take some time off to process that emotional upheaval of any divorce, but maybe not? After all the nun does say to Lucy ” You don’t want to lose momentum” pursuing Ray and her baby earlier.

Ray, the birthmother that Lucy connects with, is portrayed  as a very in control “making a choice” type of girl. She is 20 and is determined to place the baby, rejecting a few families before connecting with soon to be single mom Lucy. They never offer any reasons really that she must place except that she is determined to and does not “want” this baby, though she has a list of what she does wants for this baby boy.

One of my personally favorite scenes though is Ray and her own mother in her mother’s store. Her mother says to her:

“I was 20 and single and pregnant just like you and I didn’t want you either and now, not a day goes by that I don’t think about you all the time”

I have to say that Ray’s mother’s wisdom regarding the mother child bond plays in after. After giving birth, with Lucy present in the delivery room, Ray refuses to feed, hold, name or even look at her baby. Lucy and her mother, delighted, leave for the night and Ray’s mom goes to visit her daughter and granddaughter. The next scene shows Lucy and Ray returning to find the Nun and a a guarded door waiting for them: Ray has “changed her mind”. I don’t know quite what to think of the drama shown next. Lucy freaks the heck out and throws a fit screaming about it’s “MY BABY!! It’s MY baby.. YOU PROMISED!!” to the agency nun and the closed door as the guards pin her down on the floor in a heap of crying screaming mess.

I wanted to scream about how pre-birth contact and prospective adoptive parents in the delivery room was unethical and bad for many reasons to both parties involved..

I am not sure if there are prospective adoptive parents would act like that ever no matter how disappointed they might be. I know from reading adoption forums for years that they can be hurt, disappointed, angry  and sometimes downright nasty towards the mother that dares keep her own baby to raise, but to act like that in the hospital?   I also don’t know if the scene played out like that to show how gross Lucy’s reaction was or to make her seem sympathetic? In either case, it’s Ok because the nun, who really likes to play God too much for my taste, has another prospective baby for her that very night!

What I Hated About “Mother and Child”

My BIGGEST complaint overall is that we see both the Bening and Watts characters beginning to search for each other and the film fails to provide any accurate search information much less give any insights into adoption laws and adoptee legislation.

Rather, both characters return to the Catholic Charities Adoption Agency to do the extremely passive search method of “leave a letter in the file and if your daughter/mother returns we’ll give it to her”. Now, I can see that the Bening character might accept that since she dared not search at all until Jimmy Smits not only accepts her, loves her, marries her and agree when his own daughter encourages Bening to look before she “loses more time”. However, Watt’s Elizabeth is supposed to be aggressive, demanding, smart, and loaded with money, so how could a lawyer in this day and age never even think to turn to the internet for finding her own mother?  Watt’s character would never accept the “wait” concept, but would hire a private investigator to find her mother in a heartbeat once she decided to search. So not only was it unbelievable, but for any non informed birthmother/adoptee, they are encourage to go back to the very industry that caused their separation and be pawn again of an imperfect system. Huge thumbs down for that, Mr. Garcia.

What I Liked About “Mother and Child”

Aside from the interwoven adoption line, the movie really did examine many aspects of the Mother and Child relationship, motherhood in general and many emotional aspects of regret, forgiveness, humanity, etc. We see:

• Bening and her estranged Mother
• Maria and her young daughter
• Watts and her unborn daughter
• Smit’s daughter to Bening
• Lucy and her mother played by S. Epatha Merkerson

In fact, one of my other favorite scenes is between Lucy and her own mother. Lucy is shown frantic with the now adopted baby girl crying hysterically in the middle of the night desperately calling her own mother for help. After the baby gets put down by Grandma, Lucy goes off an amusing tirade that I KNOW many new mothers, both adopted and biological have felt and though yet never dared to say:

“I don’t love her. I just don’t love her. She is so demanding. All she does is want,. She wants to eat. She needs to be fed. She needs to be changed. She doesn’t sleep and all she does is cry. I hate her. Who does she think she F*67ing is?”

And to that S. Epatha says, stronger than she ever says in any Law & Order rerun:

“Do you think you are the first woman to ever have a baby? This is what’ mothers do. This is what it means to be the mother. So stop your whining and crying and BE the mother!”

Of course, being that this is Hollywood’s version of life, that is all Lucy needs to be ok from that point on. While a bit harsh in the delivery, I do think that the very same words should be not only expressed by other frantic mothers but said to some other moms as well and not just adoptive either. I would like S. Epatha’s words said to any woman considering adoption because they are “just not ready”.

What Annoyed Me About “Mother and Child”

Overall, despite the sometimes unbelievable drama, stereotypes, and characterizations, I thought it was an interesting and decent representation of many aspects of the emotions attached to adoption from all sides. Clearly Garcia did his homework on some level to make this film, however, because it is Hollywood, it all ties up neatly in the end.

I won’t provide any more spoilers and will just say the expected mother and child reunion scene does not happen which was kind of a letdown as I wanted to see what the characters would do.  However, for most of the main characters, there seems to be a somewhat happy, though bittersweet ending that was a bit farfetched and too pat for my liking. A shocker to two, a few questions left unanswered, a time line that sometimes didn’t quite make sense ( the two pregnancies either went on too long or someone found a worm hole in time) left me feeling Ok, but wanting a bit more in terms of closure.

If it wasn’t for the true lack of adoption search and reunion options, I could say that finally we have a movie that provides the general public with a much more realistic view of the emotions attached to adoption than Juno ever could.  If you plan on seeing the movie, due the world a favor and print out some facts about searches from the ISRR and leave them on the theater seats. You never know who might be helped by this simple gesture.

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Claudia Corrigna D’Arcy, also known as FauxClaud, writes about her real very non-Hollywood life as a birthmother at her blog:

Musings of the Lame