Casa de los babys

Desperate American women, unable to bear children, wait for months at a hotel in Mexico, in order to adopt babies.

Meanwhile, homeless and apparently parent less or unwanted children sleep in cardboard shelters and roam the streets, stealing and washing windows for survival, while one young woman reminisces about the baby she gave up, and another, pregnant and 15 years old, is on the path to giving up her baby.

This is a very affecting movie. It presents the situation, prompts us to ask the questions, but there are no answers.

The characters were interesting, and the performances are compelling. Rita Moreno, especially, was wonderful as the hotel owner.

Six American women have traveled to a South American country in order to adopt a baby. They are housed at a hotel for several months as the process takes some time. One of the them is a health nut who lost three babies of her own. Two wealthy ones are determined to adopt for their husbands' sakes and three single women long for the chance to become parents. Intermingled with their stories are tales of the mostly hapless natives of the country. There is a pregnant teen who is a shame to her mother, a young housekeeper who had to give her own baby up for adoption in order to support her family, and a young man with a dream to go to the United States and become wealthy. In other words, the story is tantalizing. Who, if any, will benefit from the situation? The story here is first rate. Human nature is shown at its best and at its absolute worst (Marcia Gay Harden's character is certainly one of the most despicable persons ever put on screen). Countries must make difficult choices for economic reasons and children are thus reduced, to some extent, to being commodities. The last scene of the movie is a stunner, summarizing the film in a heart-wrenching conclusion. Although the pace is slow, those who stick with this film will be both rewarded by it's scope and distraught over it's contents. Movie viewers who love films with merit and bite will find this one a top choice.

John Sayles, always an intriguing filmmaker, has come up with yet another conversation-starting film in "Casa de los Babys," a subtle exploration of the great divide that separates the haves from the have-nots in this maddeningly imbalanced world of ours. Sayles sets his story at a "hotel" in South America, one designed to cater specifically to American women who are waiting to adopt children to take back with them to the States. Due to bureaucratic red tape, many of the ladies Sayles introduces us to have been holed up in the hotel for months. Except for contact with the resort staff and the occasional foray into the local neighborhood, the women are essentially sealed off from the cultural and socioeconomic realities of the world around them.

The thing that separates Sayles' work from that of so many other socially conscious filmmakers is that he is scrupulously fair in his approach, refusing to pigeonhole any one group of people while allowing us to see the imperfections and humanity inherent in those on both sides of the divide. It would have been so easy for him to have portrayed the women as merely spoiled Americans, exploiting the poor of the world for their own selfish benefit. Indeed, one of the men who helps run the hotel decries the ladies as gringo "imperialists," looking to buy Hispanic babies as if they were strolling through the local market. Yet, his mother, who manages the resort and who also resents the imperialistic tone of some of the women, is pragmatic enough to know that this is a "business" like any other, and that the alternative for many of these orphans would be far grimmer if they were forced to fend for themselves out on the streets. In fact, the children in the facility, who are well cared for and who have some hope for the future, are in direct counterpoint to all the youngsters we see who are living in cardboard boxes, forced to wash windshields, beg from tourists, or steal to survive.

Of the American women, the most interesting is Nan (beautifully played by Marcia Gay Harden), who is the most obnoxiously pushy and least culturally sensitive of the group. We get the feeling that the moment she gets her hands on her new child, she will go to work draining every ounce of ethnicity from his or her soul and spirit. The other women are all far more open and tolerant than she is, being mainly concerned with filling that childless void located deep within themselves. The film is, in large part, a series of revealing conversations, in which the women voice their fears, concerns, visions and hopes about life as a parent.

The movie does an interesting job conveying the universality of motherhood, for despite the economic and language barriers that separate them, both the women yearning for babies and the women being forced to give their babies up for adoption are able to meet on the common ground of maternity.

In addition to Harden, there are excellent performances from Mary Steenbergen, Lili Taylor, Daryl Hannah, Maggie Gyllenhall and Susan Lynch as the American women, and Rita Moreno as the hotel manager who understands how the world works even if she doesn't fully approve of it. Each actress manages to create an interesting, fully realized character out of only a limited amount of screen time.

If there's a criticism to be leveled against the film, it is that Sayles leaves a few too many loose ends hanging at the end. As a storyteller, he has never been all that interested in conventional narrative, so this shouldn't surprise us, but we do sense that he could have gone a bit further with his characters here. As it is, "Casa de los Babys" feels somewhat incomplete, more like an exercise - albeit a fascinating one - than a full-fledged drama. Still, for its clear-eyed, three-dimensional and nonjudgmental take on a tricky subject, "Casa de los Babys" is a film well worth seeing.

Casa De Los Babys deals with so many issues... so many that John Sayles would need a 100 hours long movie to go deeply into all of them. And since that's not possible he manages to do it in +/-90 minutes.

Let's see: 4 north-american women (plus one from Ireland) stay in some hotel in México waiting to adopt a child. 5 different personalities, 5 different ways of facing life, 5 different existences. We have the reactionary-arrogant-and-proud-northamerican one (Marcia Gay H.), the rebel and nonconformist one (Lily Taylor), the catholic-alcoholic (Steenburgen), the misterious and reserved one (Hannah), and the dreamer (Susan Lynch). In 90 minutes we find out what do they expect from life, what are their fears, their desires; we find out about their personal dramas and their social status; what they've been through (Sayles manages to do that with only a dialogue line in many of the cases) and so... Also we have the fact that those women from the first world, have come to a third world country in order to adopt a child. With 4 or 5 sequences Sayles perfectly explains WHY México is a country where people comes to adopt children to, and why thousands of mexican women have to get rid of their babys. We see children of the street (7 or 8 years old homeless kids robbing and taking drugs),young girls getting pregnant and being forced to give their babys away (in a Catholic country just like México, abortion ain't an option), men that cannot find a job, and the corruption that hides in third world countries' bureaucracy. Well, so many things to thing about. We need more movies just like this one. Social cinema (Ken Loach, Frears, León de Aranoa) is frowned upon by some people, maybe because it makes them fell guilty.

And what to say about the cast? The five starring actresses may not be the most handsome, nor the most famous, may not have the best bodies... But let me tell you something: this is the best female cast in years. If the Oscar's were for real they should give a goddamn golden little naked man to each and every one of the women that appear in Casa De Los Babys. Not only to the anglo-saxon ones, but also to the mexican cast. If you don't care about third world's penuries, nor about people's personal dramas, you should go and watch Casa De Los Babys just to know what it means to be an ACTRESS.

My rate: 8/10

I was completely disappointed. The movie seemed contrived and forced. There were too many back stories combined into one, and I found it difficult to concentrate on the story at hand. The ending was far too abrupt. I normally like all of these actresses, but this was not a good movie to show them as a solid cast. I would have liked to see each character fleshed out a bit more.

I also agree that it was a completely one-sided view of international adoption. The whole time watching, I had trouble really understanding most of what was going and why characters were popping in and out of the story.