Review

Review Date: 5-October-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

Casa de Los Babys (2003)

As much as I hate to slam John Sayles, an intelligent, contemplative man who has some good stories to tell, the fact is that when I saw three people walk out of "Casa de Los Babys" I couldn't blame them one bit. In his latest film as in his earlier ones, Sayles attempts to weave together a number of stories to create a rich, novel-like narrative addressing several themes, which in this case include motherhood, poverty, Americans abroad, and fate. However, "Casa de Los Babys" never reaches richness, settling early on into a groove of irritating staginess which is only occasionally interrupted by moments of sheer boredom.

The plot revolves around a hotel in South America occupied by a group of American women waiting for their adoption papers to be processed. The deliberately eclectic (and wholly uninteresting) group consists of a loudmouthed harpy with a pathological lying streak (Marcia Gay Harden), a distressed yuppie with marital trouble (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a born-again Christian (Mary Steenburgen), a fitness-obsessed masseuse (Daryl Hannah), a butch single New Yorker (Lili Taylor), and a kindhearted Irish woman from Bean Town (Susan Lynch). Sticking out in typically American fashion, these wannabe mothers while away the long days by getting to know each other and bumping up against the natives, including their hostess (Rita Moreno), a sweet young chambermaid (Vanessa Martinez), and a down-on-his-luck former contractor.

The idea of a culture clash set into motion by the shared longing of a bunch of individual women might have yielded fascinating drama, but as written and directed by Sayles, none of the main characters feels like a real person. Instead, they seem to represent a catalogue of one man's not-too-insightful notions about how women respond to their common biological destiny (or their inability to meet this destiny). The motivations behind the planned adoptions range from the shallow (pursuit of respectability), to the selfish (fear of being alone), to the frightening (wanting something to control), to the generous (hoping to give love where it's needed), and are explicated through a series of contrived female bonding scenes almost painful to behold. In one, Hannah uses a ridiculous, pseudo-poetic metaphor to explain what it feels like to lose three babies born from her womb (her supposed new agey-ness is no excuse); in another, Lynch sets up her role as the antithesis to Harden's horrible harridan by describing her maternal dreams to the chambermaid and receiving a reciprocal soul-baring in return, even though neither speaks the other's language (I guess they speak the universal language of motherhood). As the mamas-in-waiting vent their frustration, despair, and determination to make up for the failings of their bodies and their lives, they are juxtaposed with the local girls, who don't agonize about having kids because they just do, usually in their teens, as a matter of course. (Which fact of life, known the world over if not in white America, produces its own form of everyday desperation; maybe this is why these secondary characters seem a lot more real).

Sayles has more success when he sets the motherhood issue aside and begins to philosophize about the randomness of fate, how a zillion and one things can affect a life, so that no one, regardless of their birth or parents, is ever dealt a purely winning hand. To this end, we see scenes of Moreno's son gone to pot, scenes of a teenaged girl knocked up by a worthless playboy, scenes of a very young urchin living on the streets, a nicely executed scene of the down-on-his-luck local man anxiously awaiting the outcome of the lottery, and, finally, a scene of two infants being handed over to the best and worst of the American women, their unknowing little souls about to be warped or nurtured, or maybe a little of both. But while "Casa de Los Babys" does end on a somewhat meaty note, it takes a long, dull, awkward time getting there. A good foreign-adoption-as-window-into-truths-of-motherhood-and-humanity fable seems like a possibility, but Sayles, alas, is apparently not the one to see it to fruition.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.