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Customer Reviews of Casa de los Babys

poetic human slice of life
I got this DVD by accident, having forgotten that I had already seen it several years ago. I rarely watch a movie twice. The opening scene of the nursery looked suspiciously familiar but it was so lovely that I kept on watching. At no point did I want to stop. I enjoyed it much more this time than the last, which I suspect bears witness to the fact that there is a lot there. <
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>The cast is all superb. The setting, Acapulco is lush, colorful and very beautiful. The locals who play themselves are filmed with the affection and respect that represents John Sayles' point of view. This is a director who has deep love for people and it comes across in so many ways. The scenes of the infants are just precious, without being overly-cute. Each of the main characters is presented objectively--we see the strengths and the weaknesses of most of them, although the Marcia Gay Harden character is clearly the "baddest." (Actually I became fond of her by the end!) <
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>I wasn't bothered by the fact that there were no clear cut resolutions to each woman's "story." I found it too short and would have liked more but it did seem emotionally complete. <
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>There is a scene in which the young Irish-American woman confides her fantasy of what a day with her new daughter would be like, to the Mexican maid who speaks no English. The maid sits on the bed and listens and then tells her story---of her 4 year old daughter adopted and living somewhere, she doesn't know where, in the US. It is an incredibly moving scene---one of the best in "movieland" in my opinion...of how people can communicate from the depth of their hearts even without having the same language.

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Classic Sayles - character/culture as relevant as space/time
I think Sayles did a great job bringing together a number of very believable characters and just showing them to us for 90-some odd minutes. John Sayles is one of the best American and original independent filmmakers out there. This is a warm, funny and at times poignant look at the adoption process at a South American clinic attended by six disparate women - all eager and emotionally at odds - awaiting their turn to return home with their new infant. I respect Sayles appreciation of complexity, especially as he favors a film that is pregnant with questions rather than delivering a simple answer. However it's his predilection towards a complex ensemble cast that I think may undermine his films as of late. <
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>The brilliance of this film is exactly the characteristic that many here have criticized it for: it contradicts itself all over the place and ends abruptly with no resolution. All have their contradictions, and none clearly speaks some unambiguous authorial opinion. The son of the hotel owner mouths his leftist analysis with his buddies, but is really a drunken loser. Rita Moreno, through her frustration with her husband's politics, voices the frustration of so many women: politics is one thing, but who'll take care of the kids? And of course, the reverse is implied as well: kids are one thing, but who'll take care of the politics? You can go through each of the characters and seem some inherent pull in opposite directions. What possible resolution could you expect? Adoption is an inherently troubling phenomenon. It always involves awkward intersections of race and class, opportunity and the lack thereof, sex and sexism, law and morals. <
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>I loved that none of the characters is entirely sympathetic, except perhaps the three homeless boys. They are all complicated and corrupted by a complicated and corrupt world that places a premium on babies and motherhood, but only under the "right" circumstances for the right women and the right kids. <
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>I was very grateful that there was no real closure at the end, and that all Sayles had to say was that, despite all, both the least sympathetic and the most sympathetic of the potential moms were about to leave with babies. This is certainly for anyone who is considering adoption (domestic or international -- either way, it's all the same issues) should see it. <
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Complex political and social tale that can be viewed on many levels
Written and directed by John Sayles, this is the story of six women who go to a Latin American country to adopt babies. As in other films by this master of cinema, it is not a simple story with a simple ending. Instead, it is a complex political and social tale that can be viewed on many levels. <
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>There is poverty in the country and hard working people. Many of them work at a luxury hotel, owned by Rita Moreno, now actually 73 years old, speaking only in Spanish and looking very nipped and tucked and prosperous. Her brother is the local lawyer. Her son is a political radical who hates the fact that the babies are being taken away. The six women who must wait several months for their babies come from varied backgrounds and each has her own story to tell. There's Lili Taylor who's tired of waiting for a relationship to blossom and wants to have a baby right away. There's Daryl Hannah, who looks gorgeous and works out and is into massage and health food. Later we find out that she's been through three traumatic birth experiences with babies who just didn't make it. There's Maggie Gyllenhal, who's only 24 years old and has gone through lots of fertility procedures to no avail. There's Susan Lynch, who comes from a large Irish family but who is unable to conceive. There's Mary Steenburgen who is the oldest and most religious of the group and is a former alcoholic. There is also Marcia Gay Harden who is indeed the "ugly American". She complains about everything, tries to bribe the lawyer and comes across as racist. And then there is Vanessa Martinez who plays a chambermaid who has given up a baby for adoption several years before. <
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>Another important element in this film are all the "extras", the real people from Acapulco, where this movie was made. There are also some important small roles given to some of the little boys who live on the street. I found their plight the most heart wrenching of all and wondered what happened to them after the film was made. We see them living in cardboard boxes, washing windshields and stealing. And then we see them sniffing paint thinner. It made the whole subject of cross-cultural adoption even more poignant because if the babies weren't adopted, they would likely wind up like these poor homeless boys. In one scene one of the women gives a child's book to one of the boys. He's easily 8 or 9 years old, but he can only look at the pictures, because, like his companions, he has never learned to read. <
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>We see some flashes of the babies who are waiting for adoption but basically but we never actually get to see them with their new mothers. Wisely, John Sayles stayed away from that kind of syrupy sweetness. Instead, he gave us a hard look at the many perspectives surrounding this film. <
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>There were no less than three 20-minute extra featurettes on the DVD. I learned that the actresses lived together in one big house during the filming and how wonderful that bonding experience was for them. I learned that John Sayles made a massive effort to show the Latin American point of view. In fact, he even mentioned that he had starting thinking about making this film when he made "Men With Guns" which is a chilling film about cruelty and death. Casa de los Babys on the other hand, is poignant in its own way but it addressed many of the same issues. I applaud his sensitivity and the many dimensions he is able to capture through his art. The problem with these three DVD features, however, is that each of them had most of the same footage. I kept watching and watching, hoping that there would be some new material, but it was the essentially the same material, just reworked in different ways. I would suggest therefore, that if you do see the DVD, that watching only one of these small features would be sufficient. <
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>This is a good film. And an important one. It made me think. And that is good.