Mothers and Daughters

I’m generally not a cynical person at heart, at least not when it comes to my movies. Films can tug at my heart strings and even get me to well up if the right emotions are being manipulated. So going into a film such as this, a love letter co-director Paul Duddridge created to honor his mother, as well as all the mothers and their children (not just daughters as the title suggests), I was excited. I like ensemble films in general; Shortcuts is among the best of this type of filmmaking in my opinion. I use that film as an example of where Mothers and Daughters fails in comparison. 

A traditional plot summary will not work for a film of this sort. What we have are about a half dozen shorter stories, some that intermix and others that don’t. At the core of all of these is the central thesis of motherhood. Rigby (Selma Blair) is a photographer recently given the job of a lifetime, taking her camera on tour with a musician to photo-journal his life on and off the stage. An unexpected pregnancy however has her questioning her own relationship with her mother who has gone virtually ignored by Rigby now that she is in hospice.  Gayle (Eva Amurri) and her husband Kevin (Paul Wesley) are struggling to make ends meet as he is pursuing his dreams to be a pastry chef. Gayle wants to make it on her own but fears she may have to ask for a loan from her estranged mother (Susan Sarandon) as no bank is willing to bankroll them. Rebecca (Christina Ricci) has just found out that the woman she thought was her sister is actually her mother (Courtney Cox). This revelation has driven a rift between the two of them. Georgina (Mira Sorvino) has found her life turned upside down when she receives an email from the daughter she put up for adoption over twenty years ago asking to find out about her family medical history. The two have never met and don’t even know who each other is even though the daughter, Layla (Alexandra Daniels) has met her through her adoptive mother, Nina (Sharon Stone), a woman Georgina has just accepted a position with in her clothing empire.

There is a lot of different storylines weaving throughout this narrative and this is the central flaw of this picture. None of it is given time to breathe. All of this is condensed into a paltry 90 minute runtime which gives it no time at all to really get to know any of these characters. Watching this film I was forced to pull up a cast list to keep it all straight. One of the stories, Rebecca and her mother, drops out of the film altogether for quite a while until a neat little wrap-up in the final reel. There is just not enough time in a 90 minute film for all of these stories. In Shortcuts, three hours was necessary to give everyone their due. This film doesn’t need quite that lengthy of a runtime but could have benefitted with about thirty more minutes so that we got more than a single scene between Gayle and her mother resolving all their issues over a single Skype call. Every story here gets the short shrift, resolved or semi-resolved without any real time dedicated to getting there.

This film was created as a love letter to the relationships of mothers with their daughters. There are many complications to those relationships presented here, but the way they are presented is superficial at best. This film has its heart in the right place but the inexperience of its directors shows. This film is too afraid to really delve into any of the issues it briefly touches on and refuses to show anyone in a really bad light. Even Quinn (Luke Mitchell), the musician Rigby is photographing, after a drunken evening where he is interrupted in the middle of taking advantage of an inebriated girl, gets a scene immediately afterwards where he Skypes his mother in tears over what he almost did. This type of stuff robs the film of any real drama and turns it into a Lifetime movie of the week.

There are some good scenes to be found here. A dinner scene with Rigby and her doctor where she begins to doubt her resolve to terminate the pregnancy provides some much needed character development for her. A phone call between Rebecca and her father gives us some context to her anger over finding out the woman she thought was her mother was really her grandmother. But too much of this film is in shorthand and it makes for an overall unsatisfying viewing. It’s really too bad, too, as there are a lot of good performers here and they are bringing everything they can to what is ultimately a poorly written film. A better script and more time dedicated to each story would have benefitted this film greatly. Instead what we have is a film that’s disappointing and hardly the tribute to mothers it was intended to be. 

Release Date: May 6, 2016

Running Time: 90 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci, Sharon Stone, Eva Amurri, Courtney Cox, Paul Wesley, Mira Sorvino and Selma Blair

Directed By: Paul Duddridge and Nigel Levy