For What it’s Worth

Jeff Wells at Hollywood-Elsewhere is the first I’ve heard declare Mother & Child as a surefire Best Pic contender, and its star Annette Bening in the running for Best Actress. I just have to laugh, though, at the “course and common” reference. Sometimes Wells’ writing seems like Blanche Dubois to me – he’s so easily offended:

I’ve just come from the first TIFF screening of Rodrigo Garcia‘s Mother and Child, and if someone picks it up and puts it into NY and LA theatres before 12.31, it’s a Best Picture contender — guaranteed, hands down, take it to the bank. Because sophisticated filmgoers of a certain age are going to cream over this — trust me, All right, don’t…I don’t care. I know what I know and I go to sleep with that every night.

This is a great woman’s film except it isn’t realy because it got to me big-time and I generally don’t fall for films aimed at the opposite genre so go figure. It’s so good and so exactingly right that a fair sized portion of the Julie and Julia audience may reject it because it’s not coarse or common enough.

On top of this Annette Bening, who gives what I feel is possibly the best performance of her life in this film, will be a Best Actress contender. I know what this is and I’m not going to go all breathless and gah-gah because that’s what some critics do when they see a new film at a film festival. For what it is — a super-sensitive, perfectly acted and exquisitely written adult drama about (the title kind of indicates this) mothers and daughters and parenting and re-establishing connections, Mother and Child is really and truly as good as this sort of thing gets. It’s got Fox Searchlight or Focus Features written all over it.