Mother and Child
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: May 7, 2010 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
23
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
ObserverRex Reed
A flawless film of heartrending realism about the eternal chord that binds parents and children and the emptiness when they are separated. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film is founded on three performances by Annette Bening, Kerry Washington and Naomi Watts. All have rarely been better. Read full review
80
VarietyTodd McCarthy
An insightfully observed and exceptionally acted ensemble piece precisely about what the title suggests. Read full review
80
Village VoiceMelissa Anderson
The force of the acting alone almost compensates for some of the more difficult (and realistic) questions about not giving birth that García willfully sidesteps. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Still, the goodwill lingers, even though Mother and Child falls down, dies and is beginning to look a little green and stiff about 15 minutes before the finish line. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle Smith
High praise for the movie Mother and Child: It's as good as a TV show. Although it's not as fine as HBO's "In Treatment," a show run by this movie's writer-director, Rodrigo Garcia. Read full review
75
Rolling StonePeter Travers
In Mother and Child, he (Rodrigo Garcia) creates an emotional powerhouse. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Garcia shoots Mother And Child with minimal flare, an approach that keeps the focus squarely on the cast, whose moving work helps pave over some of the narrative’s lumpier patches. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Mother and Child is as tangled as the emotions that link parents and children. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Garcia's calm, steady guidance behind the camera, along with his nicely finessed faith in a very good cast, makes Mother and Child a fuller and more satisfying example of this storytelling style than we've seen lately. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
While on its face, Mother and Child is about the impact of adoption, in its heart Garcia's movie reckons how consequential motherhood is in the calculus of womanhood. The fine actors show how we bond to those not related to us by blood - and also how we love. Bring Kleenex. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
Something like a finely-written and -acted soap opera. That isn’t death, but it’s less like life than you’d hope. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin Wilson
Unfortunately, Garcia can't quite resist sentimentality, giving us an ending that's a bit too emotionally neat. Still, Mother and Child is a thoughtful and provocative film about the way we live now. Read full review
75
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike Scott
If nothing else, Garcia's movie is a brave one, with its unflinching look at adoption, which -- as overwhelmingly compassionate an act as it is -- often leaves behind deep emotional scars. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve Persall
Mother and Child is depressively interesting, with characters constantly ruining their best chances at happiness. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
Mother and Child is suffused with grief and loss. It’s also suffused with compassion and insight. Read full review
70
MovielineMichelle Orange
Garcia, despite creating yet another vibrant canvas for his actors, deflects the burden of this toughest and most modern of familial conundrums, offering instead the bland, regressive ideal of motherhood as not only redemptive but required. Read full review
70
New York Daily NewsElizabeth Weitzman
Very few actual mothers will appreciate the manipulative ending, which even a child could spot coming an hour away. Read full review
70
TimeMary Pols
The movie unfolds with novelistic pacing for a leisurely but engaging two hours. Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
This is well worth seeing for Bening's arresting, unpleasant performance. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill Goodykoontz
Eventually, all of the stories will come together in a somewhat contrived way. The film's parts are greater than the whole. But the parts are worth the effort. Read full review
65
NPRElla Taylor
When it comes to family togetherness, love and quality time are thicker than blood, water or just about any other social glue you can think of. That's the admirable if hardly news-breaking message of Rodrigo Garcia's domestic drama Mother and Child, whose official thread is the impact of adoption on three different women. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Mother and Child glows for a good 90 minutes before an increasing reliance on contrivance and coincidence makes the lamp flicker and then fizzle out. Read full review
60
Boxoffice MagazineSteve Ramos
Annette Bening is the most pivotal character in the movie, both angry and scared. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Some may find the film overly schematic, but Garcia smartly uses three parallel narratives to probe the extraordinary nature of motherhood. Read full review
60
Time OutKeith Uhlich
A believably unbalanced Bening scores the movie’s true coup: Karen’s revitalizing relationship with a sweetly persistent coworker (Jimmy Smits) is a rare example of Hollywood doing right by midlife romance. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
You may not quite trust Mother and Child -- its soft spots and fuzzy edges give it away -- but you can believe just about everyone in it. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The hothouse drama Mother and Child is organized like a femme-friendly spa that specializes in treatments for the psyche rather than the skin. Soft New Agey music tinkles intrusively. Sore spots are prodded and massaged. Clients pass one another in the changing room. The ritual is exquisite to some, and excruciating to others. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Garca brings his finely calibrated sense of drama to the subject of adoption, which he handles with characteristic restraint and insight -- at least until the film's maudlin, too-pat finale. That sharp melodramatic turn is a shame, because so much of what has gone before in Mother and Child is of real quality. Read full review
50
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Mother and Child is good when it takes a harsh, unsparing look at lament and the burdens we carry throughout our lives. Then it goes for your tear ducts, and we're suddenly stranded in Lifetime TV territory. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
If the mother-child bond is the core human relationship, then this movie implies that we are an emotionally doomed species, though I do not think this was writer-director Garcia’s intent. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A slow and lugubrious film about the impact of adoption on the lives of three women. Read full review
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