Casa de los Babys (2003)

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Awesome Movie

Absolutely Brilliant!

It's one of the most original films you'll likely see all year, which, depending on your threshold for certifiably crazy storylines, could be a rewarding experience or one that frustrates you.

This is perhaps the 3rd of 4th film I have seen by Sayles. As in the others, it was a slow one and demanded my patience.The choice of actors was great, and the use of local talent equally so. While I don't know about the accuracy of the adoption process in Mexico as depicted in the film, I find the story line and the backgrounds of the six adopting mothers creditable.This film can never be a big box office hit for the very narrow subject matter it deals with. There was no violence, no sex, no twisted plot in it. However, it is the kind that takes the viewers to different worlds - the worlds of the would-be mothers, of the poor in Mexico, of foreign adoption, and of government bureaucracy.We need more films of this nature - films that give you a new experience, films that explore human emotions, films that educate, and films that dig deep to explore. CDLB is definitely another worthwhile film by the master.

Apparently I'm the only person to have seen this movie applied any kind of critical thinking skills. This movie was incredibly bad; the story was muddled, the acting was vapid, and I've seen aborted second trimester fetuses better developed than the characters. What a bunch of touchy-feely mindless vaginal trite. To all you fools with your threads who claim this is a "tapestry" or "commentary on Mexican-American relations", you must be easily baffled and find hidden meanings in your alphabet soup as well. This movie should shoveled steaming into a rocket and sent into space where it can live out its half life with the smoking remains of Lenard Part 6.

Not only did I like this film, but I gave it 9/10. It is on a par with "Limbo" or "Men With Guns." What pushed me to write this was watching all three of the documentary extras on the DVD. It made so much fall into place that I wanted to say something to the critics here on IMDb.In one scene, John Sayles says that, of all the ways people can be divided (class, race, religion, etc.), one of the crucial ways is language. People can spend hours with each other, but if they don't understand each others' language, they don't know each other. This is in direct contradiction to the comments of many viewers (including Roger Ebert!) that emotions can connect people.So I want to apply that to the most-discussed scene in the film, the monologues between Eileen and Asuncion.SPOILERS RIGHT HERE!Eileen rhapsodizes about finally having a child and being able to be the good mother she always has dreamed about. Asuncion, understanding nothing, listens with great empathy. Empathy, it seems, because she too had to give up a baby not long ago. So she hears the earnestness in Eileen and imagines that her child is with a mother like Eileen, without understanding whether Eileen is really going to be a good mother. But Asuncion is grieving, and Eileen knows nothing of this. What good is it to feel empathy for tears if you don't know what provokes the tears?If I were to change anything in this film, I would have added more sympathetic qualities to Nan. Otherwise, one of Sayles' best!

Casa De Los Babys deals with so many issues... so many that John Sayles would need a 100 hours long movie to go deeply into all of them. And since that's not possible he manages to do it in +/-90 minutes.Let's see: 4 north-american women (plus one from Ireland) stay in some hotel in México waiting to adopt a child. 5 different personalities, 5 different ways of facing life, 5 different existences. We have the reactionary-arrogant-and-proud-northamerican one (Marcia Gay H.), the rebel and nonconformist one (Lily Taylor), the catholic-alcoholic (Steenburgen), the misterious and reserved one (Hannah), and the dreamer (Susan Lynch). In 90 minutes we find out what do they expect from life, what are their fears, their desires; we find out about their personal dramas and their social status; what they've been through (Sayles manages to do that with only a dialogue line in many of the cases) and so... Also we have the fact that those women from the first world, have come to a third world country in order to adopt a child. With 4 or 5 sequences Sayles perfectly explains WHY México is a country where people comes to adopt children to, and why thousands of mexican women have to get rid of their babys. We see children of the street (7 or 8 years old homeless kids robbing and taking drugs),young girls getting pregnant and being forced to give their babys away (in a Catholic country just like México, abortion ain't an option), men that cannot find a job, and the corruption that hides in third world countries' bureaucracy. Well, so many things to thing about. We need more movies just like this one. Social cinema (Ken Loach, Frears, León de Aranoa) is frowned upon by some people, maybe because it makes them fell guilty.And what to say about the cast? The five starring actresses may not be the most handsome, nor the most famous, may not have the best bodies... But let me tell you something: this is the best female cast in years. If the Oscar's were for real they should give a goddamn golden little naked man to each and every one of the women that appear in Casa De Los Babys. Not only to the anglo-saxon ones, but also to the mexican cast. If you don't care about third world's penuries, nor about people's personal dramas, you should go and watch Casa De Los Babys just to know what it means to be an ACTRESS.My rate: 8/10