Gaby: A True Story

This film was released the same year as "My Left Foot"---and as so often happens, the Better film gets ignored and the inferior wins the Oscars. This is a genuinely quality performance by every member of the cast, and it deals with the same subject matter as MLF: a child who grows up with a mental gift, a disabled body, and all the tugged heartstrings that are essential to the cinema. Rachel Levin plays the Day-Lewis part even more convincingly, and Norma Aleandro is never less than superb.

This is one stunning drama that never misses a beat.

Gaby, suffering from cerebral palsy, overcomes enormous challenges with the help of a Mexican maid and supportive parents.

But this summary barely does justice to this perfectly directed and acted drama.

The score, by Maurice Jarre, is simply stunning, and the performances (all of them) are spot-on.

I adore this movie and count it as one of my Top Ten of All Time.

1st watched 10/9/1996 - (Dir-Luis Mandoki): Good movie about handicapped individual trying to make the best of her situation by doing the best at what she can do rather than getting down about what she can't.

This is an excellent film, with a well-written script and fine performances, particularly by Rachel Levin and Norma Aleandro. The comments that are placed at the front page for this film are incorrect factually on one point: My Left Foot was released two years after this film, not concurrently. For what it's worth, I have Cerebral Palsy. Both Levin and Day-Lewis deliver stunning work in their respective roles, but my view is that MLF is a slightly better film and both are magnificent and worth seeing. Anyone interested in either should by all means watch King Gimp as well, a documentary on Dan Keplinger, an artist with Cerebral Palsy. This film, and the other two, are most highly recommended.

I'll defer to the first commentator on how well the film deals with CP, but one thing that impressed me was that -- with one or two minor details that I question (college students usually don't live alone, and certainly not in large apartments) -- this is the ONLY Hollywood film I've ever seen that captures Mexico City, and Mexico, as a normal place with its own quirks.

Really, though, the film is more about maid's nobility and heroism (after all, she had to go to school as an adult)which is slightly overlooked with an impressive Argentinian like Norma Leandro playing a Mexican "campasina".