All about motherhood
By: Leslie Katz
Examiner Staff Writer
October 22, 2009
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| Too much to do: In “Motherhood,” Uma Thurman plays a New York mom doing her best, trying to balance her family’s needs with her own. |
SAN FRANCISCO — “Motherhood” is something of a rarity — an appealing contemporary drama, with some laughs too, about everyday life.
Uma Thurman delightfully goes against Quentin Tarantino-action-adventure type, playing Eliza, a beleaguered Greenwich Village mom trying to make it through a single day.
Frustration mounts as she gets the family up and out of the apartment (while her bemused husband, played by Anthony Edwards, doesn’t help), prepares for her 6-year-old daughter’s birthday party and checks in with her best friend Sheila (Minnie Driver).
A once promising young fiction writer approaching middle age, she stays in practice with her mom-themed blog; on this busy day she decides to enter a contest with an imminent deadline sponsored by a parenting magazine asking for 500 words on “what it means to be a mother.”
Writer-director Katherine Dieckmann’s script terrifically touches on mundane difficulties; the funniest scenes deal with street parking panic, navigating the plastic toy aisle in a party store, arguing with a bakery clerk and hanging out in the park where Jodie Foster (appearing in a fun cameo) brings her child.
At the same time, the film genuinely explores human feelings, everything from dissatisfaction to disappointment, anger and exhaustion, as Eliza deals not just with her family, but a blunder she makes that deservedly sends Sheila into a fit.
Bonus: All of the characters are likable and their motivations clearly understood throughout.
Most clever is how “Motherhood,” while an intimate snapshot of a person’s life, also makes a powerful social and political statement, convincingly revealing how — years after the women’s movement — the state of motherhood hasn’t changed that much after all.
MOVIE REVIEW
Motherhood
Three and a half stars
Starring Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards, Minnie Driver
Written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann
Rated PG-13
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes
lkatz@sfexaminer.com
