The Girl in the Park

While Girl in the Park is never great, it manages to be a solid drama about the loss of a young child and its effect on a mother (Sigourney Weaver).

Everything here is well crafted but a little bland and formulaic. We meet tons of characters who have the seeds to provide good drama but many of them (The ex husband, the son, the romantic interest at the office, the daughter in law and her pregnancy) are left with unfinished business by the end of the movie, feeling like little more than plot points. As for Louise, for all the flashiness she offers, she brings very little to the table in the end.

In the end, you will feel you have spent a nice evening. The cast does a nice job. Sigourney Weaver gives some soul to her performance and Kate Bosworth is very well cast and provides some sparks and a nice contrast to Weaver.

It's a good movie, but not a great one. Some more development, some twists and turns in the second half of the movie would have considerably improved the movie. Instead, we're left with a cheap Hollywood ending, the catalyst of which is too dumb to even write down here.

Worth watching as a rental if you like dramas.

Another movie which owes a lot to Sigourney Weaver's talent.She excels in portraying mothers with a strong guilty feeling (see "a map of the world" ).She is sadly unsupported by the rest of the cast ,but one must write that their caricatured bourgeois straight characters (particularly the daughter-in-law and Weaver's listless husband) throw the movie off balance.

All that concerns the mother ,desperately trying to recreate a dear one gone for a long time (when she was a little girl) ,is sometimes interesting.It does not renew the subject ,as old as the hills (Hitchcock's "Vertigo"(1958) ;Feyder's "Le Grand Jeu"(1934);Claude Miller's "Mortelle Randonnée" (1983) Losey's " secret Ceremony" (1968):Losey's movie depicting a "mother"/"daughter" relationship is similar to "the girl..." if we reverse the roles).

Best moment:Weaver thanking her family for welcoming "Maggie" .

This drama features solid acting all around, but Sigourney Weaver carries the emotional load and shines as the central character, Julia.

As the film begins, Julia has a singing career. She and her husband live in New York and have two children, Chris and Maggie. One day while in the park, Julia turns her back for only a moment and her daughter is gone. It's a visceral scene. A parent's nightmare.

The story fast forwards to sixteen years later. One can imagine some of what transpired during those years: the guilt, the disruption, the agony, the grief. Julia is now divorced and living alone. Her previously happy demeanor is replaced with profound sadness. She has recently moved back to the city, which might offer challenges. Though she has an office job, she is socially dysfunctional. Then a young woman comes into her life and shakes it up.

This is a story about hope and the loss of hope. I found it to be very engaging. My only complaint is about an echo in the sound quality that is distracting in many scenes.

This movie is one that I have watched many times, often with a cup of tea. I'd say this movie is for those who want to watch something full of suspense, drama and questions.

I could re-watch this constantly yet for some I can see that it can be considered to be too 'slow' for certain audiences.

The movie was well done by the various actors and actresses and its obvious that a lot of research was prepared before the final publication of the movie - such as the emotions to do with bereavement, not knowing the truth and not being able to let go of the past.

It's well worth a watch!

Haunted by the disappearance of her 3 year old daughter 15 years ago, Julia Sandburg (Sigourney Weaver) can't find any joy even with his son Chris (Alessandro Nivola) and his fiancé Celeste (Keri Russell) being pregnant. She helps Louise (Kate Bosworth) when she steals a pair of sunglasses and gives her some money later on. Louise awakens something in Julia, but it is obvious that Louise can't be trusted. Julia feels a connection to Louise and it soon becomes a question of whether Julia is actually her child Maggie.

It's a slow moving indie. Sigourney Weaver brings her A game. Her performance keeps the attention in a tense understated manner. Kate Bosworth is well cast in this. She has a blend of innocence and vulnerability as well as something darker underneath. It's not certain what her true motives are most of the time. One can really see the pain on Weaver while not being able to pinpoint Bosworth's character. There is this uneasy tension throughout as Julia adopts the mother role to Louise. There are some missing scenes in this movie. My logic mind kept asking the movie to do a paternity test ala Maury.