Movie Review: Mother and Child

A still from the film Mother and Child. Photo / Supplied.

At first glance, this movie makes women look mean. Fifty-year-old Karen (Annette Bening) is an abrupt, neurotic physiotherapist who lives with her elderly mother and lives life at a distance, fixated on thoughts of the daughter she adopted out at 14.

Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) is now 36, an aloof control freak who segues from town to town but never lands far from the mother she's never met. Technically, this is about the collision course of three women. Really, it's about doors left locked for too long.

The sentimentality is almost overcooked at the end, but knockout performances from Bening, Watts and Samuel L. Jackson, as Elizabeth's love interest, make this worth the watch.

-Herald On Sunday / View