Mother and child

Directed by Rodrigo García. Starring Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kerry Washington, Jimmy Smits, Samuel L Jackson, David Morse, Shareeka Epps, Amy Brenneman Club, QFT, Belfast, 125 mins

KAREN (Annette Bening) was only 14 when she gave her daughter up for adoption. Decades later the decision continues to shape her snappy, defensive behaviour. By day, she works as a physiotherapist; by night she nurses her dying, elderly mother.

A full-time carer, Karen’s bedside manner is not all that it might be. And her seduction technique is a car crash. (“I have some time before I have to be home: I’m getting a cup of coffee”). She can hardly talk about anything else when a jolly, newly divorced colleague (Jimmy Smits) shows a romantic interest. All his advances are met with a paranoid snarl.

Meanwhile, her daughter may have grown up to become Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), a hotshot lawyer with no family ties; “I had my tubes tied at 14,” she proudly informs her gynaecologist (Amy Brenneman) in a tone that suggests a medal is due. Her current office romance with the boss (Samuel L Jackson) is a regime of career chitchat and functional, potentially advantageous sex. Her current fumble with a friendly neighbour’s husband is just for kicks.

An anonymous woman who harbours a great resentment for the biological mother she has never met, Elizabeth drifts through high-profile jobs, apartments and lovers until her doctor breaks some wholly unexpected news: she’s pregnant. Who knew the backstreet sterilisation she bought in Mexico as a teen could not be relied on?

Writer-director Rodrigo García's troika of adoption stories comes full circle with Lucy (Kerry Washington), a potential adoptive parent with an unreliable husband. As with the Karen and Elizabeth, much of Lucy's drama might be subtitled When Adoptions Attack. Her mother-in-law scowls at the notion of a non-biological grandchild and open, contemporary practises: "I hope they don't change their minds about these rules, you know, the experts".

Adoption isn't always so traumatic. Mother and Childdoes find an ideal scenario as it works toward a full-on classic woman's picture denouement. García, a veteran of HBO hits ( The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, In Treatment) maintains a stately, storytelling pace and the grandes dames at the heart of the film score Mildred Pierce on the weep-o-meter. Mmmm. Soapy.