Vidas Ocultas

Abusive, black-hearted husband is the bad guy, and the loving mother is wronged by the unfeeling court system. However, AMAZING performance by Justin Isfeld as Jason, the son. Truly a wonderful performance for a child actor so young.

This film has two names, the one I viewed was "Going Underground" which is a better title for this type of film about a very happy looking married couple with two children. However, once the front door is shut the husband turns into another person and thinks he is in the boxing ring with his wife, who has no defense except to take all the right and left shots to the jaw. Joanna Kerns,(Maryann Walker-Tate) gave an outstanding performance through out the entire picture as the wife who struggles to keep her children and try to change the laws about abused women in the United States. Tim Matheson, (Daniel) gave a great supporting role as the most shameful husband/father you would ever want to know. This subject always needs to be told, because unfortunately women are still having to face this horrible brutality.

Effective movie where a battered woman takes her kids and runs. Joanna Kerns is good. The abusive husband played by Tim Mathison is 100% bad repeatedly abusive and kicks her out and more. She moves to a shelter and the judge gives custody to the bad dad. There seems to be little recourse for her. One problem with this movie is how can everything in the system go against her? At the crux of this movie is that the judge can't take account spousal abuse in custody hearings.

When her boy starts get abused she realises she needs to run with the kids.

Worth a watch but it's quite fraught with emotion.

...so he walked away before the end and the movie doesn't really conclude properly after dragging more than an hour and a half with the same issue. The pianist, unfortunately, stayed all along and felt he had to play through every sing scene for drama purpose. Despite good acting all around, this movie is almost as painful to go through as the issue it is supposed to depict.

I suspect that the people who dislike the film may struggle with emotional issues. This film was moving, Joanne and Matthew were extremely convincing, and the young boy who played the son has to be one of the best child actors I've ever seen. The battered woman and child story is one that needs to be told over and over again so that people can understand how traumatic and horrific abuse is. This story was extremely effective, and a lifetime original.. lifetime used to make movies like this, and I wish they would move back to these types of stories, gripping, moving, and validating. This was a heart-wrenching, beautiful movie.