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Casa De Los Babys

2003, Movie, R, 95 mins

Casa De Los Babys: Review

CASA DE LOS BABYS
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Six women desperate to adopt an infant converge on a hotel — nicknamed the "Casa de los Babys" — in an unnamed Latin-American country where prospective adoptive mothers must fulfill a lengthy residency requirement. Less a group portrait than a series of character sketches, writer-director John Sayles's story encompasses not only the woes of the yanquis, but also those of the hotel's owner (Rita Moreno), staff and a trio of feral street children whose futures are already used up. United by isolation (only one speaks any Spanish) and frustration with a bureaucracy that seems designed to take their money and toy with their fragile hopes, the American women form a loose, uneasy alliance despite their differences. Two waited until they felt emotionally and financially ready for motherhood, only to find they couldn't conceive: Embittered Nan (Marcia Gay Harden) is the group's blustering ugly American while gentle, born-again Christian and recovering alcoholic Gayle (Mary Steenburgen) is its peacemaker. The youngest women, Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the insecure wife of a wealthy bully, and Boston-based, Irish-born Eileen (Susan Lynch), are deeply wounded by their infertility. If they aren't mothers, what place is there for them? No-nonsense New York book editor Leslie (Lili Taylor), is sick of romance — Nan whispers that she must be a lesbian — and wants to proceed directly to motherhood; Skipper (Daryl Hannah), who inspires guilt and jealousy with her rigorous diet and exercise regimen, hides a deep, abiding sorrow beneath her veneer of New Age serenity. There's little story, just anticipation; the women are suspended between their old lives and the new ones that will begin when they can first attach the words my baby to a flesh-and-blood child. One of the film's most haunting scenes is a "conversation" between Eileen and fragile-looking maid Asuncion (Vanessa Martinez); Eileen describes a recurring dream of motherhood while Asuncion recalls giving up her own baby and devoting her youth to caring for her sick mother and younger siblings. Neither understands a word the other says, yet each grasps the other's piercing sorrow. Sayles focuses equally on the personal and the political, touching on the desperate straits of abandoned third-world children, cultural mores that keep poor women constantly pregnant, religious hypocrisy, festering resentment of American economic imperialism and the perception that foreign adoption is really a fancy term for buying babies. Though ultimately something less than the sum of its parts, the film's performances are reason enough to see it. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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