MINI MOVIE REVIEW:
While "Casa de Los Babys" is beautifully cast and beautifully filmed, it is also a movie that lacks both a cohesive story line and the character development that I have come to expect from Indie director John Sayles. The tight, intelligent dialogue that is a hallmark of a Sayles screenplay is almost completely missing from this movie.

The seriousness of the subject matter of interracial adoption is all that is covered in this film. As a result, "Casa de Los Babys" ends up being a political statement that subsumes what we normally understand to be a movie.

Nothing much really happens in this movie and none of the disparate plots are woven together with the result that the movie just abruptly ends without a satisfactory conclusion to any of the multiple story lines taking place on the screen.
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MOVIE CRITIQUE & SYNOPSIS:
John Sayles is one of my very favorite film directors. I consider his "Lone Star"(1996) to be a minor masterpiece of the small movie genre. Every character in that movie is brilliantly conceived and imaginatively fleshed out by some of the best dialogue ever written, a dialogue sparse and concise in its conception but incredibly descriptive in its nature.

His 2002 movie, "Sunshine State," is also a masterful assemblage of some of the best ensemble casting that I have ever seen coupled with some of the best performances that I have ever seen in any movie. Suffice it to say that I look forward with eager anticipation to each new gem from this genius of the cinema.

Sadly, this time I have to admit to being hugely disappointed with "Casa de Los Babys." This movie admittedly faithfully covers the political nature of interracial adoption, but it does so without ever creating a coherent narrative or any kind of an arc of a story line. The plot outline of this movie consists of several parallel threads examining this contentious topic from all sides without any of them ever intersecting, much to my chagrin.

None of the main characters are developed to the point where we really get to know them as people. Worse yet, much of the interaction between the stars is superficial as one half speak only English and the other half speak only Spanish.

The linguistic problems of communication along with the gut level emotions of child adoption result in a movie where Sayles seems satisfied to shine his inclusive light on an emotionally wrenching subject without letting us know more about the characters and their motivations.

The mere fact that nothing is resolved more or less proves that Sayles is unwilling to deflect attention from the seriousness of the subject matter being covered or to offer a candy coated resolution to any of the plot lines which might then mitigate our shock at being confronted by the sordidness of the underbelly of the Latin American baby placement business.

The point of view of the adopters is represented in this case by six infertile American women, all of whom are so desperate to have a child that they have settled on interracial adoption as their only solution and their last, best hope.

Perhaps the saddest case of all is that of Skipper (Daryl Hannah), a physical fitness freak who has brought three babies to term, only to watch them be born with horrible abnormalities and none surviving for more than a week after birth. She gave them each a name and thus a personality and the loss of all of these helpless infants still brings her much inner pain.

Gayle (Mary Steenburgen) is a sad, gentle Southerner who has lost the ability to conceive due to her years of addiction to alcohol.

Leslie (Lili Taylor) is a non-practicing Jewish girl from New York who is unable to commit to a long term relationship with a man but for some reason wants to have one with a child.

Jennifer (Maggie Gylenhaal) is a wealthy wife from Washington, D.C. She is naturally infertile and for this reason or for some other unmentioned reason is terribly insecure about her relationship with her husband.

Eileen (Susan Lynch) is a sweet Irish Catholic girl from Boston who is forced to count her pennies due to the unexpected longevity of the adoption process.

The oddest one of the bunch is Nan (Marcia Gay Harden), who is an unhappy, cynical woman who exhibits so many anti social tendencies that one might assume her to be the least worthy of the six to be a mother. She is loud and obnoxious and a constant complainer. She is a minor thief or kleptomaniac who delights in pilfering toiletries from the inn's cleaning carts. She also seems to be a pathological liar as she tells two of the other women two differing stories about her husband's career and her own alma mater. And then she blusters, somewhat justifiably, about the incessant delays in the adoption process and, less credibly, about the comforts or the lack thereof at the inn where they are all residing.

The owner of the inn, Mrs. Munoz (Rita Moreno, still looking fabulous some 40 years after her starring role in "West Side Story") dislikes Nan and tells her brother this, which would seem to doom her chances at adoption as he is the Mexican lawyer whom they have all been forced to hire to facilitate the process. To her eternal shame and anger, Mrs. Munoz's husband has long since left her to take up with a younger woman and her now grown but equally useless son lays about the inn spouting Marxist rage against all the rich American women down their to steal his country's progeny. Never you mind that these rich "Yanqui" women are the very ones who are allowing him to lie around in semi luxury and total indolence.

Then there are the mothers of the infants, who by and large are poor Hispanic women who are underage, unmarried, immature, and too poor to be adequate mothers to the babies that they are carrying in their wombs. The real tragedy to my mind is that these (unmentioned) Latin American countries have such a macho mentality that the girls are pushed into having sex at an ever younger age in spite of the teachings of the Catholic Church and the sure to follow opprobrium of their shocked parents at their ensuing pregnancy.

It's a never-ending cycle as again and again these poor girls are sweet talked into the bedroom by the men who then leave them to face this problem alone. They never seem to have the courage to force their lovers to face up to their responsibilities as fathers.

Then in spite of everything that these young girls have gone through, there is always a sense of loss and trauma after the adoption process when they come to realize that they will never again see their child. They wonder if their child's new mother is like any of those rich American women what are staying at this seaside resort while the adoption paperwork is being completed.

A very touching scene has one young maid tell a guest that she had to give up her child, Esmerelda, for adoption four years before and she cries about this constantly. The American wife doesn't understand a word she is saying but understands completely the emotional trauma that the maid is conveying to her.

The festering social problem of a multitude of unemployable youths is covered on two fronts as Sayles states the obvious by suggesting that all of these problems are cut from the same cloth. One very fine looking young man desperately wants to work and begs for a job at every place he visits. Always turned down, he is forced to subsist on scraps of money as a guide for the tourists like those women staying at the seaside inn. More damaging is the perennial hope of his and his fellow members of the underclass of society for the undeserved wealth offered by those flashy, televised lottery games where the winning ticket almost assuredly will never be his.

Another tragedy is the presence of the ubiquitous metropolitan street urchins. Often only eight, nine, or ten years of age, they live a life of petty thievery, begging on the streets by day and sleeping under the stars at night. They have lost their mothers and their fathers and all chances for a happy childhood. Their few snatched moments of happiness include scraping together enough money to buy a can of aerosol paint which will then allow them to huff the fumes from a bag.

One particularly sympathetic young soul looks tragically sad at his small lot in life and honestly tries to make the best of his poor situation. He seems smarter and more mature than his friends, but even with his few natural abilities he will never be able to drag himself out of the refuse heap of humanity to which he has been condemned.

Another sad, lost soul is a young teenaged girl who is only fifteen years old. She is now three or four months pregnant and showing. Her deeply shamed mother drags her from store to store to buy her maternity clothes to cover her new condition. She has the look of someone who doesn't know what it is all about and what she is now in for. The immensity of it all has yet to strike her, that her fun years as a teenager are now over. Still an emotional child herself, she is now carrying another one.

She sees fancy, sexy clothes and shoes for sale and wishes to wear them, not yet understanding that this is now out of the question. She once again meets the young man who impregnated her. He remarks that a mutual friend recently told him that "she had something important to tell him." She doesn't know what to say. "No, I had nothing to tell you," she lies. She walks back to her mother and he watches her walk away with perhaps no more than the tiniest inkling of what is going on.

It is all quite heartbreaking as this country (presumably Mexico as the film credits list Acapulco for location credits) does not have a social safety net to protect these lost children.

The Catholic Church negatively disposes women against protecting themselves with some form of birth control. Furthermore, the Church is also unable to convince the young males that abstinence and respect for their girlfriends is a viable alternative before marriage. And we have only to look at our own few Hispanic television channels to realize that these Latin American societies are even more drenched by sexual images in the media than we here in the United States.

The authorities seem to be equally unwilling or unable to enforce any method of birth control. It's a macho thing, I guess. Unfortunately, the interracial adoption procedures covered in this movie only solve a miniscule part of this endemic problem. The vast majority of kids fall through the cracks and don't get adopted. They end up being a plague on the rest of society as street urchins, soon to become thieves and drug addicts. There is no reward for the morality of labor as the society is unable to employ all of its own.

John Sayles does not judge any aspect of this as the mere presentation of the facts is damning enough. This movie is not a Michael Moore rant as the story is more effective as a quiet polemic on its own. It's all very sickening and Sayles more than makes his point. It is only the solution that is impossible to envision.

The substance of the situation is that these poor Mexican women are "factories" producing a desirable "commodity" around which a cottage industry has grown to facilitate the transfer of "ownership" of these tiny, helpless infants.

While Mrs. Munoz provides an inn as a service to her visitors, she still is living off the misery inherent in the orphan for sale business. In league with her brother, the lawyer, who must be hired to facilitate the adoption process, they work in tandem to delay, delay, delay everything. The American women most anxious for a resolution to their problems often have to wait weeks or months for the red tape to unwind, most likely because they are too naive to understand that a well placed bribe will speed everything up to an orderly conclusion. Meanwhile the tab keeps rising for everyone involved in this sordid process as all try to milk those rich Yanqui imperialistic women for whatever loot they can grab for themselves.

All of the stories are displaced snippets of an ugly life. None of the individual story lines are gathered together for a happy resolution by the end of his movie. No doubt Sayles wanted that as what's the point of putting any kind of a pretty picture on this mess?

We leave the theater knowing that that little boy will probably live a horrible life and die an early death. The handsome young man will never find a fulfilling job because there are too many others like him for what little work is available. The bully Nan will probably push her way to the front of the adoption line because she is cynical and realistic enough to know that it is only with bribes that the system will function to a speedy resolution. Pay a bribe now or stay for an extra month or two at the inn; it's all the same. The mothers-to-be are parted from their cash in either event.

And more foolish young girls will forever be falling prey to the sweet charms and inducements of testosterone driven males who will end up giving this sordid business more product to sell.

One final note about this movie is that the adoption process is presented as being a lottery of sorts in that a face to face meeting before adoption or some ability on the part of the American women to "interview" the infants and thus have a hand in selecting and bonding with their future son or daughter does not seem to be a part of the process. I am not aware that this, in fact, is the case, but, if it is, then this picture is even more disturbing.

This is not a normal Sayles movie. I wonder what influenced him to do this.