Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Casa De Los Babys

Movie Guru Rating:

Enlightening (4 out of 5)

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John Sayles tackles the South American baby trade

by Joey Cody

If you're an infertile woman in a Western country, you can undergo any number of procedures in attempts to conceive: painful injections, arcane potions (Italian nuns' pee, anyone?), psychic surgery, you name it.

But Casa de los Babys introduces us to women who have given up on the ministrations of fertility doctors, and are trying to adopt from an unnamed Latin American country. Which country, however, makes little difference because the drama is that of First-World citizens adopting infants from Second-, Third-, and Fourth-World places.

The ladies are guests at a resort that caters to women who are awaiting infants from a nearby orphanage. (The locals have dubbed the hotel "La Casa de los Babys.") In addition to Las Americanas, we are introduced to the native women who choose adoption, alongside illiterate street orphans and needy, unemployed adults.

The American women gossip about who among them is worthy of an infant, scrutinizing religious backgrounds, romantic relationships, financial wherewithal, emotional stability, and so on. During their kibitzing, we discover different causes for each woman's childlessness. Gayle (Mary Steenburgen) can blame years of alcoholism. Leslie (Lili Taylor) can't stay committed long enough. Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal) can't conceive. And the golden Coloradan, Skipper (Darryl Hannah), has lost three children.

Most of them appear to be good mom material, but the abrasively bitter Nan (Marcia Gay Harden) is the bitch of the bunch, tossing out racist comments and trying to strongarm the system. She feels entitled to a baby the way she feels entitled to steal supplies off the maid's cart. And she's in a big rush to get a daughter to make sure she can deprogram her of any filthy, inferior Hispanic traits.

By law, the women must hire a local attorney, and must live in the country while awaiting approval. There's no denying there's an organized shakedown, something Nan understands straight away: "Why do you think they're keeping us down here so long? They're going to make us earn our babies—it's the balance of trade." To which the more patient (and naive) Gayle sweetly responds, "Well, pregnant women wait nine months."

The weary, barb-tongued Señora Muñoz (a great performance by Rita Moreno), who runs the hotel, is certainly profiting from the women's heartrending longing for children. Meanwhile, her Marxist son rants that the adoption trade is just another facet of Yanqui imperialism. "Do you think they'd let us adopt their children?" he spits.

In an absurd way, this system of bribes and petty power plays may seem just, but the saddest thing about it is that it makes adoption by poorer families essentially impossible, since they can't afford to grease palms and lounge on the beach for months. In addition to travel arrangements and a long, maddening wait, adoptive parents are responsible for paying legal fees, home assessment report costs, adoption agency fees, translation expenses—the red tape and costs go on and on.

Writer/Director John Sayles (Lone Star, Matewan) lets the women tell their own stories, introducing us to a complex socio-economic issue upon which he refrains from making an overarching judgment. One of the most moving scenes in his chronicle of caste and currency is an exchange between a maid, Asunción (Vanessa Martinez), and Eileen (an Irish Bostonian played by Susan Lynch). Asunción, who is guardian to her younger siblings, once gave up her baby and imagines her daughter's life in El Norte, while Eileen daydreams aloud about a snow day with her future daughter.

This is where we are reminded of the power of the maternal instinct. For most men, the pull of parenting is pure procreation: the continuation of the actual bloodline. For women, however, the allure of motherhood is more complex. We need to nurse and nuzzle and nurture—it matters less that the child who receives our attentions carries our genes.

The cruel irony, and one that does not escape Sayles, is that adoptive parents are subjected to intense scrutiny before having one child entrusted to them. But just about any jerkoff out there can become a parent naturally and breed a slew of kids they don't care for. On top of that, Sayles reminds us of the galactic crapshoot. You can luck out biologically and end up with a great parent or kid. And you could be stuck with an abusive parent or damaged kid, too.

When faced with the reality of a poorer nation whose "greatest export" is its children, one aches to adopt the entire country, street urchins and adult beggars all. And even if you think you don't have a maternal bone in your body, Casa's misty, slow-mo pans across the sparklingly white cribs of the nursery—holding lovely, sleeping Latino babies—will make your uterus throb mercilessly.

(Guys: This is not a good date movie, unless you're already planning to knock up your wife or girlfriend immediately following dinner, or perhaps during.)