Director Rodrigo Garcia (who made the stellar Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her) once again juggles intersecting storylines. This time, the focus is mothers and daughters. In one plotline, a fiercely independent Naomi Watts plays an attorney who engages in a relationship with her boss (played by Samuel L. Jackson), in another, Annette Benning is a tightly wound woman who tends to her dying mother, and in another, Kerry Washington plays a woman unable to conceive who, along with her confused husband (played by Dexter's David Ramsey), decides to adopt a child.

Mother and Child is a complicated film with complicated characters and I greatly applaud it for going in directions I wasn't expecting. The performances are spectacular right across the board with the stand outs being Benning (whose character here is more well defined then the similarly fashioned role she plays in the entertaining The Kids Are All Right), Jimmy Smits (who brings the likability factor in spades), and Watts (whose far more complicated then she appears at the surface).

Mother and Child is a flawed film. Because of the numerous characters and sub plots, some of the scenarios don't feel completely fleshed out, but thanks to the naturalistic acting and Garcia's observant look at human nature, Mother and Child succeeds much more often than not. The connection between Benning and Watts is particularly powerful, and when you see where their story thread goes, you'll realize just how special these performances truly are. This is a quietly moving character study, and while Mother and Child is leisurely paced, its emotional payoffs are profound and rewarding.

Grade: B