Reviewed at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

Friggin’ Paul Haggis.

Love or hate Haggis’ 2004 Best Picture winner “Crash,” we can all agree on one thing: in the wake of its success, we all endured far too many knockoff humanist ensemble issue films. Just when it seemed like the end of that trend was finally in sight, here comes Sundance 2010 selection “Mother and Child,” yet another movie about a bunch of people with interconnected lives and a really important topic on their minds, in this case, adoption and single motherhood. These movies in the “Crash” mold are about two things: big ethical points and big acting, to the exclusion of just about everything else. The real shame here is that one of the stories by writer/director Rodrigo Garcia is actually pretty strong, far stronger than the others. But its impact is dulled by the film’s format, which repeatedly pushes it aside to pick up other, lesser plotlines and characters. It’s like trying to watch a really good television show with someone who insists on flipping to another channel during every commercial break.

The winner in the bunch is Naomi Watts who, in a terrific performance, plays Elizabeth, a ferociously competitive careerist starting a new job at a law firm run by Paul (Samuel L. Jackson). For Watts, Elizabeth offers an opportunity to showcase an intensity she hasn’t tapped into onscreen in a while. It’s nice to see it back. When she tells Paul in her job interview that many women find her threatening, we can see why; she is an intimidating, formidable presence. Elizabeth reveals in the same interview that she was given up for adoption by her mother when she was a newborn. She never met the woman and doesn’t care to; she isn’t close with her adopted parents and she doesn’t intend to marry. “I’m not in the sisterhood,” she says. “I’m my own person.”

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