Casa de los babys (2003)

Summary: Six women wait in a Mexican hotel/resort to adopt a Mexican baby. Their stories are juxtaposed with those of the employees at the hotel and those of a group of street kids.

When I heard that this movie was from the critically acclaimed director John Sayles, I knew something was off. I wanted to see it, and I did, but I just kept rolling his name over and over in my head, trying to figure out what was wrong with what I was hearing.

And then it hit me: Eight Men Out.

I'll remind you that that movie made no impression on me. I watched the whole thing, and I didn't care about anything that was going on there. To me, there is no greater failure in a film than the failure to connect with your audience.

This is, of course, different from being misunderstood (kind of like me and modern/post-modern art). Art is made to express something that the artist cannot express otherwise. But when you give your audience nothing at all to connect to, when you cut them off, you may have failed to create art at all.

I mean, even Alexander made me really, really angry. But not this one. It made me feel nothing at all.

That's the problem with Sayles' direction. Something's off about it. Something austere and clinical. It's like watching the movie unfold in a museum. I love museums, by the way. My grandma and I have traveled many a kilometre for a worthy exhibit.

Even so, there's this twinge of disappointment that I feel in museums. It's that whole stripper-like look-don't-touch rule. Never caress the fabric of the beautiful 17th century Acadian dress. Never run your fingers over Van Gogh's loving brush strokes. They have good reasons for these rules, but I still wish I could, y'know?

It's not the performers' faults, mind you. Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lili Taylor, Susan Lynch, and Mary Steenburgen all did excellent jobs. They had this way of slowing letting out their characters that suggested there was always more to them than you already knew.

There was this one little part where Vanessa Martinez, who plays one of the cleaning ladies, and Susan Lynch share stories about their daughters. They don't speak the same language and seem to completely misunderstand each other, but it's there. That love that only a mother can know - it's right there. If nothing else, Sayles can write a monologue like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, I do mean nothing else. The cast is this movie's saving grace, so I can't condemn it. C