The lives of three women have a commonality: adoption. Karen who always regrets giving her daughter, Elizabeth, up for adoption; adopted Elizabeth whose personal life lacks warmth and Lucy who eventually deciding that adoption is the best bet to start a family with her husband.
For the first time in a very long while, Bening disappears into a character and turns in a performance that isn't about her shamelessly playing to the rafters to grab after Oscar.
Mother and Child is a compassionate, multi-threaded tale about the lives of everyday women -- though this time, they are more explicitly defined by the primal bond of the title.
Mother and Child reminds us how important the notion of lineage - of finding a discernible path through life that doesn't just begin and end with ourselves - is to our personal identity, and the decisions we make in life.
It's a highly contrived affair with a barely concealed, deeply conservative Catholic agenda, and it has the ring of a cracked bell calling the righteous to prayer.
What keeps the whole thing from toppling into an abyss of unwatchable TV drama histrionics is a pair of dynamite performances from Annette Bening and Naomi Watts.