Mother and Child – review

This well-acted, overlong movie centres on three women, strangers to one another, their lives linked by their attitude to motherhood, and a Catholic adoption agency catering for well-heeled residents of Los Angeles. Annette Bening is a sour fiftysomething physiotherapist who only saw her daughter 37 years previously when, aged 14, she gave her up for adoption. Naomi Watts is this daughter, now a successful lawyer, a cool control freak rejecting all permanent relationships. Kerry Washington is the African-American owner of a patisserie, who longs to adopt the child she cannot bear. It's a highly contrived affair with a barely concealed, deeply conservative Catholic agenda, and it has the ring of a cracked bell calling the righteous to prayer.