Word: motherhood
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...this post-women's liberation era - it did happen, although a lot of people seem to have forgotten this - it is hard to believe that an amply educated, allegedly intellectually eager woman like mother Eliza Welsh, the character played by Uma Thurman in Motherhood, would be at all surprised to find herself dissatisfied with frazzled days spent tethered to a stroller. But she genuinely seems to consider herself a pioneer, a truth teller of the not-entirely-pleased stay-at-home...
...have the temerity to stop to admire it ("It's a neighborhood, people, not a theme park," you snap), so surely you've seen the Sunday New York Times? It contains a magazine that frequently and capably chronicles the various dilemmas facing contemporary women, particularly the one involving balancing motherhood with a career. (See TIME's cover story "The State of the American Woman...
...Writer-director Katherine Dieckmann has supplied a simple narrative thread familiar to all mothers: multitasking. This means that if you're already a mother, watching Motherhood is a little like spending a bad day with your most self-involved self. On this day, Eliza must shop for and give a birthday party for her daughter Clara, who is turning 6, care for her toddler (who, Eliza should be grateful, is always nodding off into a convenient nap) and also find the time to pen an essay about "What Motherhood Means to Me" for a contest she would like...
...contest; she assumes that if she applies herself even a little, she'll win. She taps away at the keyboard for a few minutes, then heads off to a sample sale with Sheila. (Driver, blooming with her own pregnancy at the time of filming, is the best thing in Motherhood; she's wry and funny and real.) I was too busy eying the racks to see if the legendary New York sample sales are really all that to notice that this marked a serious lapse in Eliza's work ethic. But Avery calls her on it, right after...
...honest answer is, because otherwise she might have missed the opportunity to buy a $380 dress for $40. Watching Thurman deliver this line, I thought of the opportunity Dieckmann missed. Her eye for the details of motherhood, from the list-making to the depressing nature of adults socializing in a sandbox while their precious offspring play, is so acute. If she would just edit out the few soft touches designed to make us like Eliza - like her kind attentions to an elderly neighbor - Motherhood would play like a flat-out parody of the entitled, self-involved mother, fretting more than...